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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24223582">Lamb</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Torturer_Writes/pseuds/The_Torturer_Writes'>The_Torturer_Writes</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Blasphemy, Blood, Blood Kink, Blood Magic, Corporal Punishment, Death, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, F/M, God Kylo, Hypnosis, Implied Genocide, Knifeplay, Loss of Virginity, Masturbation, Menstruation, Mythological AU, Red Mustache, Religious Imagery &amp; Symbolism, Smut, Suicidal Thoughts, Talk of Pregnancy, Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 17:53:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>44,340</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24223582</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Torturer_Writes/pseuds/The_Torturer_Writes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In the beginning, there was only Vader, the Sky Walker. He wandered the heavens, filling the void with the cosmos. </p>
<p>To combat his loneliness, Grandfather Sky Walker created two brothers, twins: one drawn to light and one drawn to dark.</p>
<p>Their bond created all life as we know it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kylo Ren/Reader, Kylo Ren/You</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>180</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>172</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Lamb</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Well, here I am again, and here we go again. Please take the content warnings seriously because I am not a nice girl; and herein, may lie not-nice-girl things.</p>
<p>This is my first foray into world building, and I welcome all feedback, critiques, and comments. :)</p>
<p>Special thanks to kassanovella and crystallclover for helping me develop this idea and get it ready for sharing.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>In the beginning, there was only Vader, the Sky Walker. He wandered the heavens, filling the void with the cosmos. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>To combat his loneliness, Grandfather Sky Walker created two brothers, twins: one drawn to light and one drawn to dark.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Their bond created all life as we know it. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>You ran your fingers over the intricate gold leaf pattern on the book’s cover, remembering your lessons as a child. This Scripture, your grandmother’s most treasured possession, was the only part of your life you’d brought on this crusade. It was the only thing you couldn’t bear to abandon, even in the face of certain death.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You exhausted every avenue before taking on this last of your options. You demanded justice from the law only to be told you should keep your mouth shut. You went straight to the throne, but it shut to your caste, your people too low to deserve even an audience.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Selling every item of value, you had barely scraped up enough for the one-person craft, but it served its purpose.  You were here. You landed the shuttle on one of Chandrila's famed rolling hills, overlooking The Demarcation. You exhaled, shallow and nervous, and looked out over the horizon. The pilgrimage to this place, this day, was long and harrowing, but the sacrament itself would be quick.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Your fingers quaked as you shucked everything identifiable about yourself: blue pants your mother bought for your birthday; green shirt that belonged to your brother, found in the rubble of what was your family home; jade hair clip handed down from mother to daughter for generations. None of it would serve you now, and it would only be in the way. Trading the vestiges of civilization for religion, you donned your grandmother’s ample amethyst robe, lacing the silk ties that held it together, and grabbed up the athame she’d bequeathed to you at your initiation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She enveloped you, your grandmother, and you buried your nose into her sacred garment to inhale the lingering scent. They were your world, lovely and loving, ground to dust beneath the machine of a war none of you pledged to fight. The Resistance descended upon your planet like a plague, and they left a great nothing, a slate wiped forcefully clean in their wake.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was for them you made this trek, that you abandoned all logic and reason for faith. They raised you to share their doctrine, but it never served a single purpose for you in life.  Your grandmother and mother believed everything they’d ever taught you about the Twin Fathers. They wove the fabric of their lives, and yours, around it; and now, you clung to their prayers, your last hope in the face of something horrible and wholly dismissed by the universe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was no one to remember them, their faithfulness and devotion, but you.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Fathers, we pray. Bless this our food to the nourishment of our bodies that we may be strong in your service. Bless these our hands that we may share your great instruction with those in need. Bless our hearts that we may find the balance you have so righteously set for us.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Their prayers spilled over your dry lips, the only eulogy they would ever receive, and every holy word strengthened your resolve.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Clutching book and blade in one hand, you punched a series of numbers into the keypad nearest the bay door, extending the ramp. When it finished descending, you issued another command, the tiny keys lighting up with each pressed digit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Self-destruct sequence initiated.” The robotic voice vibrated the tiny craft’s walls. “Confirm.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span> “Confirmation,” you cast one last look around the shuttle that had been your home for a month, “Bravo Echo 2-4.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Countdown 2 minutes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sunlight, warm and inviting, welcomed you as you stepped off the ramp. Squinting into its brilliance, you recalled the way your brother would read to you on lazy afternoons and how your family would picnic on similar grassy knolls. The beeping over your shoulder grew faster with each passing second, and you lifted the cumbersome dress around your knees, wasting no further time jogging down the hill. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>You were out on the flat land for just a second before the shuttle exploded into a fiery ball. You watched the blast shoot debris and columns of soot into the perfect sky. In another life, it would have scared you, shying you away from the destruction. Silent, stoic, you tracked plumes of grey smoke and the fall of ashes, comparing it to the devastation you found after the Resistance found your planet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Days after the attack, you roamed fallen buildings and picked through still warm rubble. You had been too late, too far away. Knowing you could have done nothing to stop the strike was empty consolation. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>You could have died with them. You would rather have died with them. Now, all you could do was die for them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>On bare feet, you crossed the flowery field, taking in the array of purples and yellows. You lingered on the blue-green grass, feeling the soft stick of it underfoot, and you basked in the wispy clouds overhead. This was life, teeming with vibrant colors, but it all felt hollow, dampened. You wondered if everyone who came here felt this way, grateful that this beauty would be one of their last memories but unable to fully appreciate what they saw.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Pressing your lips into a determined line, you steeled your will and turned to The Demarcation, The Great Divide.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Grandfather Sky Walker tasked the twins with creating and maintaining The Balance. One would usher life; one would usher death; both harbingers of fate.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>It was striking, a sudden upheaval of vitality in deference to darkness. Tendrils of fog mingled with melancholy dusk, and you spent a long moment admiring the space between one and the other.  This spot, this one impossible convergence, was balance. It was what every man strived to achieve, and no man could boast.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>On the other side of the billowing veil, where you were coaching yourself to go, was The Ren’s territory. People far and wide spun countless tales about the land and its Master. It was a bottomless hole, they said, that would swallow you up steps past the boundary. It was an unending bog, and all who journeyed there were lost. All of its structures were built from the bones of the dead, and The Ren was the vicious king of an unforgiving wasteland.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Your grandmother, however, believed The Ren to be a merciful father, wise and misunderstood. He was the bringer of ends who did not differentiate between rich and poor. No creature was safe from his touch, and that made every creature equal in his eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Whatever that land may be, whatever The Ren may be, there was nothing on the other side of that shroud that could compare to what you’d already endured. It was the way forward, your only way, and you bid yourself to go forth on deliberate steps.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mirroring the track of your life, a balmy day gave way to a wintry gloom as you moved through the gauzy curtain, passing from one kingdom to another. The living world fell away, replaced by slender black trees that shot up to winking stars and stood adorned with wide, scarlet leaves. A ghostly breeze blew, shaking the leaves to delicately fall and blanket the spongy ground. You trod upon them carefully, uncertain what might lurk beneath the crimson carpet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You took your time on the winding path, drinking in every otherworldly detail. Light pooled from a clandestine moon, and the very air shimmered under its grace. Midnight-colored blossoms dotted the road, mingling with swaying ferns. The stars shone so bright you could almost hear the twinkle, a delicate song tapped out to echo against the trees. Every inhale was laced with morning mist and rich earth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The stories were wrong. This was no forlorn place. It was luminous, hallowed. Absent the touch of civilization, this land had bloomed unharmed, untainted. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This world felt more real to you, more easily understood. Colored with variations of shadow, it was peaceful in its ashen palette.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Reaching the altar, you stared, both reverent and curious. How many had come before you to lay their lives down for The Ren? How many had died as a sacrifice? Surely, its ruddy color came from generations of blood spilled in offering.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a chalice to which you would soon be adding.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The stone was cold and damp, raising gooseflesh on your nearly naked form. It curved down in the very center, a macabre cradle for all those laid here. A blending of emotion and chill cast your skin in shades of flush and set every digit to trembling. It was as though the thing waited for you impatiently, its very existence demanding an offering.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Your skepticism at your grandmother’s faith dwindled when confronted with an exact duplicate of the altar upon which you’d taken your initiation rites. It was larger, but the ridges were the same. The slab of your childhood did not bear such a florid hue, but the sacrifices it received had been sugar, water, bread.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This shrine’s very construction felt haunted, a cauldron of souls made solid.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hoisting yourself up onto the behemoth, you arranged your tools in the very center.  You set the athame at your right and spread the weighty purple velvet over the shrine, laying the fabric and yourself out as you would for a lover. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Your lips trembled. Your knees knocked together. The cloak barely covered your body, and the little satin bows lent an air of innocence you could hardly claim as truth. You hoped, swallowed a handful of prayers, that The Ren accepted sacrifices as the stories told. Today, confronted with the reality of this place, you believed it more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tenderly, longingly, you ran your fingers over the tome once more. You lifted it and pressed a gentle kiss to its cover. It would lie beneath your head during this last of your chores and for however long your body would remain here. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Closing your eyes, you conjured memories of your grandmother bearing witness to so many dead over the years and how you, filled with doubt and agony and hate, had failed to do the same for your family, your friends, your people. It had been too great of a thing, too much sorrow to compact into a single prayer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The words came easily now, having been swirling and growing in your chest for weeks.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Into thy hands, Great Fathers, do we commend this soul, departed from the body, in payment for the souls still yet to come. We pray that you welcome her, keep her, and enter her into the great Balance so we may again feel the light of her love.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Swallowing your grief, you gripped the wicked blade tight. You had no more tears to cry. You brimmed with an awful energy, this ceaseless anguish bubbling up from your very marrow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Dark Father,” you brushed fabric away from your right leg and sliced a deep gash into the supple thigh before you could change your mind. “Hear my prayer.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You hissed at the burn but smoothed your features into a stolid mask. You would do this for your family and people, who received no warning, no choice to convert or flee. You would make your entreaty to The Ren; or, you would die here and reunite with them. Whatever the outcome, this was your end.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I commit my body to your hands. As your brother has given it to me, I give it now to you to use as you will. Grant me the grace of your ear that I may plead my case.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Your breath stuttered, and you fought back the roaring in your ears so you could concentrate and carry on. Fixing your eyes upon the trickle of blood, you watched it turn to a pool and hurried to match it with another slash at your left forearm. Benumbed, you tracked the redness as it crested and spilled in every direction.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The callous cold seeped into your very bones, and you fell back against the altar with a gasp, fingers grasping for the book’s corner. You blinked, heavy lidded, as your face fell to one side, staring into the great forest beyond.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In your delirium, you thought you could see them, smiling and holding each other. Tears you thought you no longer had rushed forth, and you shook. Weakness or acceptance broke open the gate on your heartbreak, releasing a torrent of sobs and screams. There was no one to hear, to care, to chastise you for its futility.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You heard her voice, your grandmother’s tone the same that had been soothing your fears since you could remember, rubbing over you like a comforting balm.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>More than yesterday, beloved. Less than tomorrow. Find me in the Balance.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nona, I’m coming.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Your fit rode your wounds and bled away to faint sniffles and glassy eyes. You stared up at what you felt had to be an eternally night sky and pushed your fingers through the growing sticky puddles. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This was death, and you welcomed it. You would slip away into a dreamless sleep here in such a place as you never knew existed. Fatigued, breathing slow, your face fell to one side, eyes unfocused but still dancing from beauteous flower to leaf to timber.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was a charcoal smudge, nothing more. His movement was so subtle your addled brain took him for a tree, black clad and too tall to be a man. He stepped through the maze, and what little tenacity you had left drained away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He came to sit upon the side of the altar where you lay dying, tilting his head to look at you. You stared, bewildered and confronted with the most beautiful man you’d ever seen when you had been expecting The Ren, the great storied monster. He passed his hand over your face, and the sting of your wounds abated. The heaviness of your limbs lessened, and the burden of your body eased.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Feeling and consciousness and awareness flooded back into your senses, and you bolted upright. Understanding dawned, and you gaped at him, struck dumb by every mesmerizing feature. Ebony tresses crowned him brilliantly, and he looked back at you with deep, glittering eyes. His fair skin was sprinkled with twilight constellations, and his lips were full, lush, slightly pink.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This </span>
  <b>was</b>
  <span> The Ren.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Troubled by the absence of death, you surveyed your situation, shaking both tense hands into fists. The ritual robe clung to the altar more than it did to you, swirling lurid with your blood. Blood that still flowed, you realized. Wide-eyed and amazed, you studied this unnatural phenomenon. The wounds at your thigh and wrist still wept; they should have killed you, but there was now a sanguine loop wrapping each injury around to feed into itself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why have you called me here?” His voice was gravelly, as though he hadn’t used it in millennia.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Am I dead?” It was a staggeringly stupid question, but it was the only clear thought in your head as you stared at the vermilion ouroboros around your wrist.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you intend to answer every question with a question,” his enormous hand shot out to capture the flesh just above your forearm laceration, “you will be soon.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He squeezed the wounded limb until you shrieked and tried to tug away. Deciding that he would not let you go until you appeased him, you licked dry lips and worked your mouth into a measure of moisture.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why did you come?” Your query shocked even you, and you snapped your mouth shut hard enough to hear the clap of your jaws.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>True to his word, The Ren’s hand connected with your throat so fast you couldn’t say for sure he’d moved. In one moment, idiotic inquiries filled your muddled mind; and in the next, you were choking at the end of his arm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your howling,” his fingers tightened at your throat, thumb rubbing into the pulse almost delicately. “The next question will be your last. Why are you here?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Licking your suddenly too-dry lips, you studied him, wrapping both of your small hands around his wrist. This man, this deity, was walking death, and that he sat here with his hands upon you changed the very foundation of everything you believed to be true.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I-I came to ask your favor, Dark Father.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He shoved you away and stood from his perch. Death’s gravity pulled you down again, and you whimpered, reaching for him as though it would prolong the inevitable. Your mouth worked on a plea, but none came.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ve wasted your time. And mine.” He turned away and spat the rest over his shoulder. “Sparing virgins their lives or the lives of their lovers lost its allure long ago.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Glancing back, he must have seen something, perhaps the abject apology in your face and on your outstretched fingers, because he snatched you from oblivion in a blink. You broke into wretched sobs, each lung-full of air quaking and painful. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I came here so you’d come for me.” You dug bloodstained fingertips into your eyes to staunch the tears. “And to ask for your help.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was ethereal, his presence just a step out of sync with the rest of the universe, and it was difficult to look upon. You turned your face to one side and tried to compose yourself. You were battling the significance of your loss against the staggering truth that The Ren was real and here.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You come to ask favors but cannot even look upon the beast?” He closed the gap in a blur, and you shrieked, leaning away. “How do you plan to beg if you will not even open your eyes?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Crowding in aggressively, he leaned over and braced himself with both sturdy hands on either side of your head, an effective cage. His gaze traced over every curve of your face, and you couldn’t move under the oppression of his scrutiny.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You think you will make demands of me?” His voice changed, dropping to a malicious whisper as he brushed a lock of hair from your forehead, tracing it to its origin in your hairline.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He would eat you; you were sure of it. Razor-sharp teeth hid just behind those beautiful lips, and he would tear you to pieces. Bolstering yourself, you drew in a shuddering breath and looked up into the galaxy-filled eyes. You had to say the words. You had to tell him what brought you here, but you weren’t sure you could do it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The dying lamb has no value to the shepherd.” His suddenly gentle tone belied his impatience and interminable power. “Tell me why you are here; or, I will leave you to die.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You stared at him for what felt like an eternity, losing yourself in his resplendent gaze. It was like staring straight into the sun, and every part of you felt branded by him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Your reasons for coming here meant little to him, you were certain. You pictured your family again and the horror inflicted on them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The tension in your body loosened as purpose flowed through your veins once more. Your trembling lips blew out a steadying breath, which seemed to please him. He traced your lower lip with the very end of his thumb, waiting for you to speak.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Retribution.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Someone Like You</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>“You need someone in the middle—not dead, not alive.” You arched upwards, trying to get even a bit of slack, just enough to speak. “Someone like me.”</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Did I ever think I would be writing about Kylo and babies? No. No, I did not.  Am I writing about Kylo and babies? Maybe.  Its a crazy, crazy world, y'all.</p><p>Special thanks to kassanovella for helping me edit this asshole of a chapter.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“Retribution.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The word sounded ludicrous on his lips, infantile and irresponsible. Abruptly, you had a clearer picture of what was happening. In this mesmerizing nirvana, his encapsulated kingdom, you </span>
  <em>
    <span>were</span>
  </em>
  <span> a child, stumbling into an adult’s arena to demand attention.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Your senselessness laid bare, you stared at him, adrift in the gleam of irises that never settled on one color. The pregnant moon overhead framed him, adorning his breathtaking face with a perfect, glowing halo. He was unnaturally beautiful, the kind of king women wept for. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Father...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He met your whisper with a sneer, and you recoiled. He, too, thought your trek here was juvenile; you were just a witless woman wrestling with her emotions. Your heart sank at his judgment, disappointed that he thought you naïve.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ashamed, you fixed your eyes upon a creeping succulent. You traced thick, tear-shaped leaves and winced at inch-long thorns. You could all but feel the phantom pinpricks. The red and pink blooms made for a variegated shroud to decorate the otherwise plain shrine.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was lovely in its lethality, a fitting summation of this place.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The Resistance slaughtered my planet, my ENTIRE family.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You licked your lips and tugged at his sleeve, pulling yourself up to sit. Recognizing what you had just done, you wrung your hands, as though he was a walking electric current. Even so, he was the only bit of warmth in this melancholy vale, and you subconsciously leaned into it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re a fool.” He rose to an obscene height and moved away. “I care less than a whit for your holy wars. You murder on fantasy, not truth.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The absence of his body was nearly as painful as his lack of understanding, and the resultant shout erupted before you could stop it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“IT WAS NOT OUR WAR!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Your exclamation bounced off shedding trees to die away in spongy, mossy hills. Sniffling, you pressed the heels of your hands into exhausted eyes. Yelling at men was an awful idea; yelling at this specific man was the epitome of lunacy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>How were you going to explain the hole in your soul to a creature who had none? To Ren, your mourning and loss were just specks in eternity, but he didn’t spend his days loving the living only to lose them. If your grandmother's stories were true, he had been this walking void since his creation.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And the brothers made themselves a land with a great vault separating light from dark. In their wisdom, they decreed the living would gather under golden sun, and the dead would gather under silver moon.  Grandfather Sky Walker gave his blessing: Let them rule over these lands through all ages. Let there be day and night, and let them usher in The Balance.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He </span>
  <em>
    <span>was</span>
  </em>
  <span> here. It </span>
  <em>
    <span>was</span>
  </em>
  <span> true.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That cast his indifference into an unusual shade of acceptance. Like this place, he existed outside of the universe’s organic stream. It wasn’t a lack of feeling; it was one colored by millennia of demise.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You were struck by the understanding that he made everything here in his image, all of it immaculate, alluring, and fatal. Just as he was.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The Resistance decimated my planet on a rumor—a rumor that we were a First Order cult.”  Your voice was steadier than you expected. “But my family, my friends and everybody I knew...We were just ordinary people.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You lifted your eyes and found him examining you, a curious look playing across his striking features. You huffed a pained breath and looked away again, fearing you would shatter under his scrutiny.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My grandmother believed in the Balance, not in some notion of wiping the Galaxy clean of Soloists.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His silence was deliberate, aimed to unnerve, and you crumpled forward, bending as though you could implore his aid into reality. When he moved, it was to stalk a circle around the altar.  His head cocked to assess your every angle.  Captured prey, you could do nothing but watch, wait, wonder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Belief in the Balance will not return your family. Nor will I.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His glorious voice had bite; but where there should be an echo, there was none. Every lilting tree, every swaying vine, even the very air enveloped him, moved with him, absorbed his energy.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hugging yourself, you fought down your apprehension.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, it won’t.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You looked past him to fat carmine leaves and marveled at how they turned their faces towards The Ren, their master. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He only understood in terms of the absolute. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I came to ask you to kill them—the people who murdered my family. The Resistance.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His circuitous pacing ended at your front, and he speared you with such a look you felt conquered. If he was the next crusade, the holy war renewed, you would fight for him, lay down and die for him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His long fingers slid you to the altar's precarious edge. So near to him, your comatose heartbeat increased, thudding against ribs his knuckles skimmed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“All of them?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You nodded, meek and uncertain. He stepped in, spreading your legs wide just by his body’s substantial design. He was the epitome of domineering, his shape meant to terrorize the weak, to endure immortality. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Uncertain if you were allowed to put your hands on him, you braced against the slab, leaning slightly away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The scent of this place, misty and piny and richly floral, was powerful, distilled to purity in his body. It seeped from his pores, the sumptuous belladonna curling around you like tainted tendrils.  He obscured what scant light there was and blotted out your senses, filling your light head with dread and longing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With one finger under your chin, he lifted your face and beckoned you into such a trance you didn’t notice how he lazily caressed your outer thigh. One by one, he tugged upon the plum, plump bows keeping the rest of you hidden. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What price are you willing to pay for genocide, lost lamb?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was hypnotic—the timbre of his voice, the delicate dance of his fingertips, the starry shine of his eyes.  You blinked at his question, too caught up in the slow drag of his knuckles along your sternum and down between your breasts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Your lips worked feebly, discarding every suggestion your brain made. What could you offer a being such as this? Prayers? He would condemn them. Offerings? Paltry trinkets. Blood? You’d already given it. Pleasure? You weren’t sure he was capable. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a cruel game, and the realization burst over you like icy water, flooding your addled mind and shocking you back from stupidity.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You had nothing. Purposefully divested of everything, you sojourned here a destitute fool. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There it is.” He brushed a thumb across your lips, smirking. “She understands now that she has nothing, is nothing, of value with which to bargain.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He collected your silent tears and fed them to you, salt in the wound. Chidingly, he wrapped stiff fingers around your quivering neck and squeezed until you felt your supernaturally sustained pulse drumming in your ears. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is as I said. The dying lamb has no value to the shepherd.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear licked at your nape, clamoring into the rational parts of you. Your mind whirred, desperately trying to unearth some kernel that would serve your purpose. There </span>
  <em>
    <span>had</span>
  </em>
  <span> to be something.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The memory struck you suddenly and at full velocity.  Careening, your breath stopped. The lineage of Soloists was a pastime for your brother, who made you sit through innumerable sessions and lectures.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And Solo took himself a wife, making her flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone. Their union was prosperous, and she begat him many sons, the first being...</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Your body shot into motion, vacating all self-preservation. You grasped his hand and pulled it to your chest. You were even so bold as to thread your smaller fingers through his. On instinct, both legs wrapped around his hips, heels digging into his legs in a feeble hold. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>You were unwilling to renounce your argument without a fight. Hastily, the words spilled out, a wishful wine you weren’t sure he would drink.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“NowaitIcanbeyourvessel!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A perfectly sculpted black brow rose over his eye. He untangled his fingers from yours, scoffing. Your face burned, impossible beads of sweat forming at your pounding temples. Not knowing what to do with your hands, you pressed them to your flaming cheeks and tried to calm yourself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Choose your next words carefully.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Entertained by the toddler, he was indulging your delusions, but there was a limit to his patience. </span>
  <span>Sturdy hands slid beneath your thighs, parting and lifting them so he could draw your hips further into his. You couldn’t argue; you were the one who stopped him from leaving. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Was that an erection you felt there? Was this proof to your curiosity? The possibility sent goose flesh tingling to every inch of your skin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your brother... Ah!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Athame in hand, he gouged the tip into your unblemished thigh, raising a lone drop of blood. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your brother has many children; does he not? There are stories about his prolific family.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Out sized, you spiraled into anxious desire. When he tired of your nonsense, pulverizing your bones would be little more than a snap of his fingers. Yet, here he was, still wedged between your thighs and feeling a lot like a man who could make you forget your name. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Reminding me of my brother is not the way to make your case, lamb.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He dragged warm lips over your pulse, lathing it with his tongue. His wide palm wrapped around your generous hip, and every single thought fled on bated breath. He was woefully seductive, a wolf in shepherd's clothing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You licked your lips and shook your head, trying to agree and clear away cobwebs, but his hands and nipping kisses befuddled you so much you could only sputter half-formed words. Switching your concentration to the blade, you valiantly tried to keep track of it and tied yourself to it's path like a lifeline. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But you don’t.” You splayed your fingers out wide, palms flat on the altar. "Your seed will kill a living woman, yes? But a woman already crossed over cannot carry a child."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You were about to launch yourself from the proverbial cliff. Regardless of what came next, you would be a splatter at its bottom.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I- I can.” You begged the endless midnight sky to strengthen your resolve. “You can have me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had been rubbing you up and down his rigid length, your body no more than an instrument to appease his ardor; but at your declaration, he gripped your hips painfully tight and bit your shoulder. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Attuned to his mood, the stars dimmed to a faint radiance. It was the one detail your brain could latch onto, the way even the greatest of them conformed to his will. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You think that’s a novel gesture? That you’ll be the first person I’ve fucked here?” His voice was low but no less edgy. “How many would you wager have died screaming at the end of my dick?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A pathetic whimper escaped your open mouth, and hunger set it to watering. The idea of him fucking you here, in this open clearing under his meticulously curated twilight, was salacious, tantalizing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Countless.” You couldn’t stop yourself from rolling your hips, trying to jump start his back into rhythm. “But I would wager very few of them have been willing to bear your children.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He growled, a vicious, threatening promise. His soft touch turned angry, coiling into your hair and yanking your head back. Your throat seized, elongated by his grip and fully bared for execution. What had been a grazing scratch of your blade turned again to a harsh point dug into the skin. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>You could hardly speak, reduced to gaping at his flashing onyx eyes. They blazed with a fiery hatred, and you knew it was because you were right. It wasn’t easy for him like it was his brother. He had spent eons alone whereas his brother wanted for nothing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It infuriated him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You need someone in the middle—not dead, not alive.” You arched upwards, trying to get even a bit of slack, just enough to speak. “Someone like me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He curved around you so tight you could smell the deadly nightshade on his breath, every single part of him designed to snuff out life. You chewed the inside of your cheek, wondering how each part of him tasted. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Someone like you?” He spat the words, fingernails digging into your scalp. “Impure? Spoiled by how many men in your lifetime? Cowed by a little death and stupid enough to make demands of me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was so close to snapping your neck, and you itched for it. You would gladly die at his hand, reunite with your family. All of these morose colors blended with the sorrow in your heart, and you pictured your bones rotting to dust, anchoring you here forever.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he held off, glaring down at you in barely-checked contempt. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caught between wanting to die and wanting to murder, your breathing tilted into erratic, skirting panic so closely a fallen eyelash would detonate the bomb in your chest. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looked at you in such a way, though, that your apprehension settled. He was angry because he didn’t know how to feel things. He was intended, to his very marrow, to only ever take. Anything else was uncomfortable and worthy of destruction. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>You nudged his nose with yours, a mirror to his earlier gesture.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Someone willing.” It was less than a whisper, barely a breath. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His calculating gaze roamed your face, judging the depth of your commitment. In seconds, the pointed extension of his anger sliced down your supple thigh, cutting open a large gash.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But pain wasn’t his target.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His aim was true. The rogue missile was expertly guided. And when the thing forced into your cunt, you screamed in unmitigated horror.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m no gentle lover, and this is not your marriage bed. Willing or not, the lamb is meant to be slaughtered.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You splintered into a wrecked and blubbering mess, heaving and howling. You clung to his shoulders, gouging little crescents into his neck. You had expected to die today but not by the blade cleaving apart your pussy. Offering him your womb seemed to make him only want to carve it from your body, a trophy to mark your idiocy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You should not offer things that don’t belong to you, lamb.” The vibration tickled your earlobe, drawing you down from your mania. “Your body was mine the moment you crossed into my land.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You felt it then, the shift and nudge inside your cunt. Where you were certain there had been a sharp edge, there was only an ornately ridged column, handcrafted and safe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was the hilt. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The wave of frenzy crested, and you opened puffy, red eyes onto a lucent, luminous moon.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had buried the knife’s handle into your cunt and was pumping it slowly. He held the traitorous blade without even a single red cell shed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>You wailed a halfhearted objection because this was a profane corruption of a consecrated relic. A particularly long drag of the makeshift phallus countered and shook loose a vulgar moan, and you squeezed tight around it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was shameless and sacrilegious.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And it felt so, so good.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You whimpered when he licked your lower lip, barely making contact. Your thighs splayed wide, eager, and an appreciative noise rumbled in his throat. He rewarded your responsiveness with another slow, deep plunge of the weapon, and your head lolled back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How is your religion serving you now, lamb?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He shoved the handle as far into you as the guard would allow and worked it back and forth, rubbing the ridges and pommel against the sensitive spots inside. You moaned sinfully loud, and grasped at him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was ruthless, prodding the elusive bumpy patch until you bucked against his hand and watching you float through this immoral delirium.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You wished it was him. His mouth, his fingers, his cock. Anything but this false idol ramming into your pussy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Your whimpers turned to pleasured cries. Your calves tensed and shook. Looking down on his blasphemous claim, you yelped and pushed at his arms, the torrent of blood splashed over your thighs and sex wrenching you from your high.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In your hysteria, you’d forgotten that he’d sliced open your leg. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Father, please…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He dug his thumb firmly into the wound, gripping nearly your entire thigh in the one tremendous hand. For a moment, the throb in your pussy traveled up to swirl around the intrusion, and you writhed to get away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you call me that again,” he bit your jaw, raising a welt, “I will slit you open from cunt to crown.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He played in the plasma, coating his fingers with it. You whined and grimaced, caught between salvation at your cunt and persecution at your leg. When his tacky thumb connected with your clit, you shouted, wracked with tremors. Like a savage, he masturbated you with your own blood, rubbing fast circles.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rapture barreled down the length of your spine, working its way through every extremity. You were going to cum for him, at the end of your family's treasured athame, and there was nothing you could do to stop it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was indecent, and you drowned in it. You collapsed back onto the altar, arching up into a delicious bow. Your knees drew up higher, and your hips worked for him, chasing what he dangled but never quite delivered. Your fingers scrambled against the uneven stone and fisted the velvet garment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Your insides coiled, churning terror and thirst together until you couldn’t tell one from the other. Inching closer and closer to that crack of lightning, your cries built, a tumultuous, hoarse crescendo.  You thought he would make you tow that line forever, so close to bliss but never allowed to feel it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But finally, mercifully, it came.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A blistering exaltation slid over your every nerve. Your cunt clenched and quaked, gushing a lewd prayer. The knife in his hand was the center of all gravity, and every part of you swiveled around it, rolling and bucking and shaking. You hurled a string of curses no priestess should ever know, earning a derisive chuckle.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Such filth from that pretty mouth.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Spent, your back finally met the slab beneath, and you fought for breath, chest stinging and throat crackly. A pained whine escaped when his torture implement departed from your slick center, but he gave you only a brief reprieve. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He climbed above you, dropped his heavy knee onto your sensitive mound, and shoved the sullied hilt into your mouth. Your eyes flew open, but he captured your jaw and kept it in place, ensuring that you held the thing upright. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Copper tang pooled on your tongue and wafted under your nose. On a muffled whinge, your eyes rolled back into your head. Automatically, obediently, you rocked your hips under his trap. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No less than you deserve.” He was all spite and venom. “Swallow.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You couldn’t look at him, the stars in his eyes daunting and demonic.  Your tongue moved around the hilt, licking away the remnants of your vulgar display. You curled your fingers into the hem of his shirt, exhaled slowly through your nose, and complied, gulping the taste down. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A timid glance found him studying you, but you didn’t know what he was seeking. Obedience? Passion? Reverence? The gravity of the moment was inescapable. He was deciding if you died here and now, and he gagged you from making any further entreaty.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lithe for his size, he slid from the perch and pulled the athame from your mouth. Silently, he lifted you from the slab and dropped you on the ground. Not knowing if any of the flora was poisonous, you squealed, shot to your feet, and clutched the abused blade to your heart. A second later, you nearly impaled yourself with it when he threw the hefty book at you. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Grateful that he didn’t destroy your remaining link to your family, you sunk to the ground and dug aching fingers into the dirt. It was cool and soothing, and you wanted nothing more than to lie down in it and die. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Instead, you watched, benumbed and mute, as he punched a large hole straight through the center of the altar.  It should have been alarming; the crash of rubble should have scared you, but your senses were far past overstimulated.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Silently, he manipulated a chunk of the altar into a slender loop. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was astonishing. He was literally creating something from stone that should have been unyielding. Crouching beside you, he pushed your chin up to lengthen your neck. It was then you understood what was happening.  The thing he was fashioning out of the imbrued marble was for you.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Without a word, he molded it around your neck, cementing it with a pinch of his mighty fingers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His masquerade as a man fell away. That shrine had stood for a thousand years, likely more, and he demolished it as though it was parchment. He had desecrated the altar to enslave you, spinning an infinite bondage into existence with his very will alone. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The strength, the unfathomable power unleashed a yearning you weren't prepared to address. He was something wholly beyond what you'd been taught. He was profound, unknowable.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You ran your fingertips along the jagged edges and discovered his collar was perfectly measured to your size.  His fingers would fit between it and your skin, but nothing more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Every story you ever heard about this place rang in your ears, a raucous chorus of warnings. The living could not stay here, nor could they take anything from here. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But it was too late.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>By your own hand, you now existed between life and death, trapped here by this pillaged, obsidian tether and it's king.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You didn’t know if he would do as you asked or if he would make you bear his children.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You did know that you would never be leaving.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Will You Help Me?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>“Will you help me?”</p><p>It was a question you thought he’d certainly heard before, but it seemed to shock him. He stared at you, unblinking, for an uncomfortably long moment before blowing out a low, even breath and nodding.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Nothing snappy to say here. Just a little plot contrivance. Shaking off the dust from my absence. &lt;3</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The sky darkened, accompanied by a ghostly wind to punctuate the gravity of what had just transpired.  You gaped at the decimated altar, unable to tear your eyes from it and commit to the path you’d forged.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Silent, he watched you. You could feel the density of his gaze as he waited for you to change your mind and try to flee. How many had made similar offers only to abandon them when confronted with such a stark reality?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You drew a fortifying breath far, far into your lungs and closed your eyes.  As though they’d been waiting just at the perimeter of the moment, the words leapt into your mind.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I can do all things through the Balance. Strengthened by them, it strengthens me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Bolstered by prayers you never thought you’d recite, you stood and turned to face your fate. He was a more beautiful fate than you’d ever expected for yourself, but he was far more terrifying than any you had. You had no idea what came next, but you would be true to your word, having been raised to keep it above all else.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He turned and made his way back into the treeline whence he came. You followed behind, picking gingerly through the brush on bare feet but knowing better than to complain. Every stinging step you took broke twigs and crunched leaves, but The Ren left no evidence of his crossing. No part of his world was disturbed as he moved through it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was only you who did not belong here.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The realization socked you in the gut. It was profound — this knowing that you belonged nowhere and with no one.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tripping on a vine, you crashed to the ground on a yelp. Pressing your hands to your chest, you tried to get yourself under control, to slow your haphazard breathing. He already thought you weak, and you did not want him to think you any more foolish. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But it was useless. You were only human. Exhausted, skirting mania, you wept and shuddered. You were alone in the Galaxy with the only creature in existence who was, by design, incapable of feeling, of empathy. He was made to be the uncaring end of all things.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Long moments stretched as you tried to compose yourself. This wasn’t simply sadness; it was a mortal response to the reality of immortality. It is one thing to believe in gods.  It is something entirely different to know they are real.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Whether it was pity or impatience, this particular god turned back for you. In only a few strides, he was at your side. He tucked the book and blade against your chest and crossed your arms over them. You stared at his profile, but he paid it no mind. Instead, he lifted you into his arms effortlessly and resumed his path.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Despite how much you wanted to walk, to follow him like a willing adult and not be carried like a child, you wondered if he ferried everyone who died like this? It was hard to believe he was capable of tenderness, but the act of carrying you was, itself, tender.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Like nothing you’d ever wanted before, you wanted to study him, to absorb every detail and blister it into your memory. You also wanted to push against him, twist out of his embrace, and show him you could do this. In what you felt was the wise choice, you fixed your eyes upon your own ruddy fingers and leant your head against his chest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mysterious forest gave way to quiet vale and a new, delicate scent. He was moving too fast for you to take in very many details, but you knew better than to ask him to slow down. You discerned that a steel blue moss covered the sloping hills, and tiny, white, bell-shaped blooms and bright red mushroom caps decorated the pathway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Too soon, the valley was crossed, and you disappeared into a yawning mouth carved into the base of a haunting mountain. You felt small compared to The Ren; and in the face of this mountain you knew he had made, you were positively dwarfed and shrank into yourself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You didn’t notice that his dwelling wound down into the ground instead of up into the sky. Nor did you notice how sparsely it was decorated or how dimly it was lit. You only registered that he stopped moving and sat you upon your feet at the edge of an opulent pool of water.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Benumbed, you slipped into a wholly unfamiliar kind of overwhelmed. Your brain could not process any more of this world, and you crept nearer and nearer towards a fractured psyche.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He divested you of your things, eliciting an immature whine that you instantly hated. Chidingly, he gripped your chin and tipped your head back so he could look down upon you. You lost yourself to his freckles and the gentle echo of waves at the bath’s walls.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Get in the bath. I’ll come for you soon.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You looked from his stern eyes to the bath and furrowed your brow. You only just noticed that the contents of that ornate fixture were stone black, shining like oil. Forsaking your injuries for what you felt was good sense, you met his stare again and shook your head, too far gone to exhaustion for words.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re injured.” A vice grip circled your upper arm, and he dragged you closer to the well. “Get in; or, I’ll throw you in.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The irritation in his voice brought tears to your eyes, but you couldn’t articulate your anxiousness.  He made every single thing in this world to be as deadly as he was, and you didn’t trust that this bath wasn’t exactly the same. It made perfect sense to you that the black water was murderous, but you couldn’t say it out loud.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was all too much, and you sunk out of his grip and onto the floor with a thud. Rocking back and forth, you pressed your fists into your eyes and wrestled with this innate fear you couldn’t shake.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Thunder cracked when he snapped his fingers, and your eyes shot back up to find him glowering at you. He pointed at the bath again, and you swallowed your own spit, trying to moisten your mouth and throat as though you had something to say, but it was only a ploy to lengthen the moment, to put off whatever came next.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Will you help me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a question you thought he’d certainly heard before, but it seemed to shock him. He stared at you, unblinking, for an uncomfortably long moment before blowing out a low, even breath and nodding. You intended to look away as his nimble fingers made quick work of his clothes, but you found you couldn’t even do that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Your breath stilled. Your mouth fell open on an inaudible sigh. Captivated, too tired to be ashamed, you drank in every detail.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They said men could not, should not, look upon their gods lest they be disappointed, but you could fathom no one being disappointed at the sight before you. Ever.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was perfect, all broad shoulders and muscle. His beautiful skin was dusted with beauty marks at such places you thought were the exact right spots for kissing. He pushed thick fingers through raven black hair, edging it back away from his face. You lingered on abs, on hip bones, on ankles; and at each one, you found yourself surprised. There was no part of him that was unattractive. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was built like a man, but it was as though he was the blueprint from which man came.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Long and lean, he left you in your dirty crumple and stepped into the bath. He disappeared beneath the surface for only a second, only long enough to blacken his already ebony halo with the tainted water. He stood in the very center of the pool and lifted his hand to you.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was the single best come-hither gesture you’d ever seen in your life.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll not do it for you, lamb. Come.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You had been so certain before, so sure that you could do this if he helped you. But now? Now, he was naked and waiting for you, and you stuck to the floor as though it cemented you there. Your heart rate skyrocketed. Sweat dampened everything, everywhere. You could hear the increased pace of your anxious breathing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Your body made the decision without any mental involvement.  On auto-pilot, you slid the ruined robe to the floor, pushed to your feet, and reached for his hand. His touch sparked electric current racing to your most intimate parts. The surge dipped into your heart, your spirit, and you willed yourself to not jerk away. He took another step toward you to strengthen your balance, and you dipped your toes into the pool.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Consternation knit your brow as you stepped further in and reached to brush your fingers through the liquid, assured it would sting, bite, burst into flames. Instead, the water was neither too cold nor too hot. You expected a strong chemical or crude odor, but it didn’t smell bad at all.  Rather, it smelled like lilies.  Besides being so dark it obfuscated your toes, it was slippery and tingly, and you swore it all but coaxed you deeper in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Like a womb, the water enveloped you, warming to your exact body temperature. The further you sunk down into it, the more you accepted it, the more it practically vibrated around you. Beneath the surface, something of a current lapped at aching muscles, pulling loose an appreciative groan.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Head tipped back, mouth slightly parted, you were almost there, almost at relaxation when you felt it. Staring at his face, you blinked rapidly while trying to talk yourself out of what you thought. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Surely, there was nothing else in this bath with you.</span><br/>
<span>Surely, he didn’t lure you into this complacency to feed you to some demon from the deep.<br/>
</span>
  <span>Surely…..</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The slide against your legs came again, though, scaly and undulating, and you launched from your lazing faster than you could even register. A volley of shrieks echoed in the chamber; and somehow, you climbed The Ren like a tree in your terror.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s in the water!?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was his curse that broke through the haze right before he physically unwound you from his neck. You cinched your legs tight around his middle and scratched at his biceps, trying to hold on and resisting being plunged back down into the bath. Strung tight like a bow, you clung to him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Flowers.” He reached into the inky abyss and pulled up a drenched bloom. “They enrich the water.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You turned away, eyes shut impossibly tight and not caring that what he said made sense. You were beyond the point of comprehension and could only see in variances of anxious, bewildered. Nothing in this place was safe except this spot right here.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Please.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Your voice was softer, more fragile than you ever remembered it being before. His beautiful mouth pursed, and he relented. Shifting so you were face to face, he wrapped your legs around his hips, splayed both hands across your back, and lowered you both into the water. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He lifted a thumb to brush away mud and caked blood from your face. You swallowed any further objection, but your eyes stayed round as moons. You looked over one shoulder and then the other.  You looked over his shoulders, too, searching for how this bath was going to kill you. It was irrational but unstoppable. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tinted by your fear, the water’s heat dropped away. It responded to every nervous chirp and twitch. Soon, your lips were blue, and your teeth chattered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you don’t calm yourself, you will die.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The almost affectionate way he murmured it was disarming. In your fugue, you followed the line he was making for you but very, very slowly. Your face crinkled with confusion. He had stopped you from dying before; hadn’t he? Isn’t that how and why you were here at all? In the middle? As though he could hear your questions, he lifted your arm from the water and brushed his thumb through the bloody loop.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll not keep saving you from your own stupidity.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When your brain caught up to your body, you snapped your mouth shut hard and nodded, forcing your jaws together to stop the clacking.  You were causing yourself further distress by wallowing in that distress. Intent upon steeling yourself into some measure of calm, you counted the freckles on his face. You’d moved on to his throat when the tension in your back eased and your shoulders dropped.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You didn’t notice that he had slowly waded you out into the middle of the pool; but when you did, your eyes darted around quick and uneasy. He folded you further into his embrace, tucking you against his chest, and hushed your discontent. Grateful and giving more, you slid both arms up around his shoulders and pressed your breasts flush against him. The pleased noise he made soothed you, as did the way he nudged at your jaw with his nose.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Better.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Satisfied that you were coming back around to sanity, he rubbed at your calves, ribs, cheeks. There was a frisson of </span>
  <em>
    <span>something</span>
  </em>
  <span> every place his fingers touched — a pinprick, an impossible hook, a sizzle under your skin. Coupled with the strange alive-ness of the water, you were quickly lulled into a peaceful quiet. You vacillated between watching his face as he bathed you and laying your head upon his shoulder to simply feel it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You pretended that he was comforting you over the loss of your family, that it was benevolence driving his soft touch and not preparation. Silent tears slid down your nose to roll along his skin; but if he noticed, he said nothing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This was likely the only kindness you would get from this creature, and you didn’t want to ruin it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Turn this way.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Stress barreled back into your body at the interruption of his voice, and you dug your nails in when he tried to move you. Having just learned the lesson, however, that the water would adjust to your mood, you held your breath and leaned back to look where he was instructing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you not healed?” He gripped the thigh he’d sliced open as proof to the claim. When you hadn’t been paying attention, the water was undoing some of the day’s damage. “Open your mouth.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The look that crossed your face must have betrayed your initial impulse to refuse because he hooked a finger underneath the obsidian collar to keep you from wriggling away. You all but pouted, wondering if he would reduce you to feeling like an infant every single time he spoke. Caught like a fish, you closed your eyes to hide your embarrassment and obeyed. Barely.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was faint, so far beneath his breath you nearly believed you’d made it up, but part of you was so certain you heard him say ‘good girl’ that you looked at him just as he slid his thumb along the inside of your cheek.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Slowly, seductively, he rubbed the pad of his thumb against the bumpy ridges you’d made by chewing the tender skin. He dipped his hand into the water and repeated the effort on the opposite side until you squirmed. He checked your gums and the roof of your mouth for what you assumed to be cuts from the athame hilt. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He crooned and rubbed something against the very center of your tongue, which pulled an involuntary noise from deep in your throat. It had a rich, copper taste, but it was so fleeting you convinced yourself it was just more of the magic water.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We will have to find better uses for this mouth, lamb.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tugged upon your lower lip, and you flushed from head to toe. He walked you towards the pool’s edge, and you assumed he was finished. The kindness bubble burst; bath time was over. Your shoulders sunk in defeat, and you nodded even though he didn’t directly ask you anything.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He stopped short and unhooked your legs from around his middle. Half in and half out of the water was cold, sending goosebumps darting across your heated skin.  You folded your arms over your chest, but he wouldn’t allow it. Turning you to face the wall, he wrapped your fingers around the tub’s ledge and pushed in against you.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The doting man who was just bathing you was gone, replaced by someone, something hungry. Those large fingers wrapped around your ribs, holding you in place just where he wanted. You tried to look over your shoulder at him, but righted your face forward at each attempt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Where else were you hurt? Do you remember?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He crowded you into the wall and pushed against you, wedging what could only be an impressive erection into the cleft of your ass. Your brain short-circuited because of course you remembered. How could a person forget being fucked on The Ren’s altar by their own damn blade? There was a great divide, however, between your memory and your brain’s ability to form words — particularly when his fingers traveled the length of your body.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Both demanding hands squeezed your breasts hard. He rolled your nipples between his fingers and tugged until they throbbed from swelling. Dipping his head down, his husky, gravely voice was dangerous, and it set you to quaking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Here?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You bit your just-healed lip and shook your head, feeling the ache begin deep inside your core. You closed your eyes tight shut because you weren’t convinced you wouldn’t beg him for some kind of relief if you saw the way he had to be looking at you.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His knuckles dragged down the length of your spine to disappear beneath the slick surface. You jolted onto your toes when the pad of his finger rubbed against the tight bundle of nerves between your buttocks. Up and down, again and again. Your toes curled with the effort to be still.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Was it here?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Pressing your lips into a hard line to contain the whimper, you shook your head again with more urgency, but he continued to stroke that delicate spot until you couldn’t keep the gasp in any longer. Anticipating, hopeful, </span>
  <em>
    <span>eager even</span>
  </em>
  <span>, your legs shifted further apart to give him room.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His touch dipped lower, two fingers sliding around your pulsing opening, and your head fell back on an obscene sound. He teased the area, never connecting with anything more than the outer rim. Back and forth, he rocked your entire body by this, your new center of gravity.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Here? Tell me. Be specific.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Your eyebrows pinched together tight, and you tried to keep yourself from rocking and bucking into his hand. He’d never let you wiggle your way onto his fingers. It was his way or nothing at all. Scowling, both in defeat and in concentration, you shook your head again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Because the cross guard of the blade wasn’t the thing that left tears in its wake.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah.” He said, pushing two thick fingers up into your cunt with no further pretense. “Here then.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You cried out in surprise. Your eyes flew open, and you scratched at the tub’s ledge. He held you against the wall with a weighty grip at your shoulder and gave you exactly no amount of time to acclimate to his fingers. He pumped and twisted them until you shuddered. He pushed in as far as your body would allow and curled and wiggled his fingertips through your groaning and gasping.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The water he fucked up into you tingled and cooled your overheated core, a deliriously magnificent sensation when accompanied by the thick intrusion. You wanted more, and you nearly crawled over the pool’s lip to lift your ass higher so he could sink his cock into you; but just as swiftly as it began, it was over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His fingers withdrew, and you were empty.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deciding you would not humiliate yourself further by begging, you sniffled and rubbed away tears. Turning, you looked at him through fat droplets and clumping lashes. Latching onto you by your new accessory, he tugged you to him and chased away your hurt with a sudden kiss. He cupped your cheeks tight, thumbs squeezing your cheekbones. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His lips were plush and firm. His tongue was greedy, and he explored every bit of your mouth. He swallowed every squeal and whine, and he nibbled at your lips until they, too, were puffy from his attention.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And through it all, you only had one coherent thought: He tasted like candy. Sweet cyanide.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re not ready, little lamb.” To your surprise, he smoothed away the wrinkles from your confused forehead. “I will hear you beg for my cock, but not today.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. I'll Be Good</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>“Say that again.”</p>
<p>His voice was gruff, gravely, but it wasn’t as filled with hate. You blinked up at him through wet lashes and sniffled in the most unattractive way. He brushed his pristine thumb across your dirty mouth. Striving to calm yourself, you looked away, but he wouldn’t have it. He turned your face back to front and met your scared stare with a level one.</p>
<p>“I s-said I’ll be good.”</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>Pleased with his creation, Grandfather Sky Walker gave to the brothers a commandment: Fill my cosmos. Illuminate the farthest reaches with life.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Solo created First Man from mud, molding limbs and lungs in his own likeness. Imbued with divine spark, First Man lived but could not find balance. In heat, he dried to death; in moisture, he was shapeless.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Second Man was made of wood and could hold his shape but could not live. Once cut from the mother tree, he was inanimate, unable to carry the spark.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It was his brother, Ren, who counseled the Light Bringer to give of himself to create life. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>One… two... three... four...</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The grand clock carved into the wall chimed, shaking the walls, the floor, even your teeth. You glanced up from your book and glowered at the damnable thing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You sat across from it, on the floor and tucked up into a corner. Trying to count the seconds between minutes morphed into trying to count the minutes between hours. Your determination bordered on obsession. Your head ached; your eyes felt doubly heavy, but you had to figure out the method to his madness if only to stave off your own.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>To your surprise, The Ren allowed you to wander his keep; and in doing so, you discovered this monstrosity of a timepiece and that he did track its interminable, never-ending crawl. There was no way to know, however, if he did so in the conventional way as he dodged every question you put to him. It was always dark here, and it was a reasonable assumption that he marked the millennia in his own way.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Unable to work out his pattern, you abandoned the bid for your Scripture, choosing to pass the time, whatever it may be, with something familiar. But the cherished memories lifted from the words did not soothe you the way you’d hoped.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By your likely misguided calculations, ‘not today’ turned out to be not tomorrow, either. Or the next day. Or the day after that.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You did not see much of The Ren beyond that first day. After your healing bath, he deposited you in a room to sleep and disappeared. He’d been gone almost the entire time since then, only showing up to spare you five minutes. He would descend upon the room, wrap you up into his arms, and silence every attempt you made at drawing a single detail from him by kissing you senseless.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Each time his lips laid hungry claim to your mouth, you wondered if he was actually, truly touch starved. His hands roamed, fingertips luring your body into breathless response. The taste of his tongue drove you into the sort of mindless whimpering you assumed only existed for other people, it having been so absent from your own life. Decadently sweet, you all but sucked his tongue like a lollipop until something deeper, richer took over the luscious taste.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dates. Almonds. Iron.  It was elusive and intoxicating.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And then, he would go. It was the second day before you’d noticed it. He left soon after that coppery caramel slid down into your throat, and you didn’t see him until he wanted your mouth again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He did nothing but kiss and half-grope you, however, and it was unnerving. What he said to you rattled around your brain endlessly. ‘You’re not ready.’ Three words set your insides to warring.  Of course you were ready. You knew what to do. Didn’t you? What was it about him, specifically, that would demand you be more ready? What, exactly, did you need to be ready for? His dick? His child? The end of your life?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He rounded the corner to your little alcove just as you snorted in annoyance. You leapt to your feet and brushed away imaginary dust. Cocking a brow, he hummed and looked you over from head to toe. Following his line of sight to the meeting of your thighs, you flushed and tugged the hem of his shirt further down. He hadn’t given you anything else to wear, and you’d found what you believed to be his things in the room farthest from yours.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was thievery or nudity, and you opted for breaking whatever laws he might have.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re here!” You fidgeted, cheeks burning under his perusal. He took a step toward you, flattening you against the wall. “I.. I’m sorry about the shirt. I had nothing el--”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He quieted your babbling with a smothering kiss, capping off your surprise. Wrapping both hands around your backside, he lifted you up and into him until your toes nearly left the ground. You mewled and clung to the undersides of his arms, already pliant and ready from just the first sweep of his lips. He didn’t even have to demand entry; your mouth parted for him naturally, eagerly. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He was your drug, coaxing you to surrender with each caress of his tongue.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When finally he broke the kiss, he tucked your hand between his thighs, helping you palm the growing erection.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Should I cut off this offending hand?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His voice was thick like honey, and it stuck to the most debauched parts of you, pushing you fast to a throb you could scarcely ignore. You couldn’t help it; you shook your head and squeezed the rigid column against your palm.  The pleased noise he made, the step he took to press more of himself to you, the flash of his eyes—all of it wound you up into this bliss, this euphoric dizziness. It would only be a breath before the next kiss.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How,” you tipped your head away just before his mouth connected, “how was your day?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He ignored you and captured your lips again. He licked them open and curled his tongue against yours. You sighed happily; he was opium in your veins. He dug his fingers into the globes of your ass until you squeaked and matched the noise with a rumble deep in his chest. He nipped and tugged at your lower lip until you moaned and squirmed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“My days aren’t your concern, lamb.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You blinked at the outright condescension, the jolt of reality into what could otherwise be a romantic moment. Taking advantage of your befuddlement, his heavenly mouth started a fresh trail down along your jaw to lick and suck at your pulse. As though to punctuate his desire for your mindlessness, he covered your hand with his and worked your palm against his length until he grunted with satisfaction.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cursing, you waded through the mush in your brain, pushed at his shoulder, and twisted your neck out from under his marking teeth.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Please…” You inched onto your toes to make yourself just a little less infantile. “I... I don’t have anybody to talk to. All I do is wait here and cry. You’re always gone, and you never tell me anyth--”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He bit into your throat so hard you punched him in the shoulder on reflex. Lifting his face, he threaded rigid fingers into your hair and jerked your head back against the wall with a thud. You winced and shut your eyes to hide from his ire. Would he ever think of you as more than a child?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This is no fairy tale. You’re no princess.” He shook your head side to side until you opened watery eyes to look. You didn’t miss how his own gaze dropped to your wobbly lips. “You’re not here to play house.  You have one purpose only.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m not doing that either, am I?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Insanity, you thought.  This was insanity. The snap in your voice echoed in the little hallway.  You pushed at his chest and tried to shrink out of his tight embrace. It terrified you that he would make good on your bargain; and at the same time, the very fact he hadn’t done so aggravated you.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The ferocious look that crossed his beautiful features dried out your mouth, forced you to swallow the tantrum you’d been building. He sneered at your feeble attempt to push at his chest; and even though you knew it was an awful idea, you vomited words anyway.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If you won’t talk to me,” you nodded, as though you could mirror gesture him into agreeing with what you were about to say, “you could just let me leave for a little wh--”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He slammed you back into the wall, lifting you clean off of your feet.  His features darkened, greying into haunted, and his ebony hair seemed to undulate. Stone fingers gouged bruises into your flesh, and it felt as though the very air in the room fled with the shift of his mood.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t mean </span>
  <em>
    <span>leave</span>
  </em>
  <span> leave.” You stammered and wriggled in his clutches like trapped prey. “You could go with--”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“NO!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His bark crashed off the slate walls. Thunder cracked overhead, and you lifted a panicked stare to a black, foreboding ceiling. The expanse of his keep was closing in on you, stealing every atom of oxygen and launching you fast towards mania.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re. Not. Leaving.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The constriction at your throat stunted what little sense you had left. Foolishly, childishly, you barrelled on, but you could no longer tell if you were trying to placate the beast or truly escape.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Please, if you would just let me go out--”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In the blink of an eye, you were dangling in frigid, open air just as you’d asked.  Frantically looking about, you realized you hung just inches away from The Demarcation, the border to his territory, and his fingers wrapped so tight around the jagged collar you thought he was sure to break it. You clawed at his forearm and desperately tried to fight free.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fine. You want to go?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The absolute malice in his voice laced your every blood cell with fear. His eyes settled into a steely gray just as onyx lightning split the sky behind him. Knowing what came next only made it more difficult to bear. Horror paralyzed you, stopped your very voice cold. You couldn’t even plead for his mercy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Go.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It happened almost in slow motion, and you wondered if it was so he could watch the abject terror roll across your features. He launched you through The Demarcation, threw you away like garbage he no longer wanted to clutter his beautiful land.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You were dying before you even hit the ground. Arched up into a painful bow, your chest seized, no longer obeying your brain’s order to breathe. Your throat swelled shut until you produced only frothy, warbled wheezes. The wounds at your arm and leg spilled over, the spell he put upon you eviscerated.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In minutes, you’d undone the deal you worked so hard to secure. All of your prayers and sacrifice had been for nothing, trampled by your irrational mortal fear. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Ren was right. You were witless.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Thrashing away from the too-bright sun, you fought to your hands and knees, face burning and eyes bulging. You wouldn’t make it back to that blessed silver curtain, but you strained for it regardless, crawling a few paces towards it before your body buckled. Collapsing into a filthy, bloody heap, you tipped your face up to that beautiful marker and stretched your fingers to it, begging once more.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Da--”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was the last and only sound you made.  Your eyes dulled against the vibrant colors he’d tossed you to. Your fingers grew lax, muscles giving up the fight. Your already comatose heartbeat slowed further, drawing to its end.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Right on that line, right before you were too far gone, the part of his land still wrapped around your neck hearkened to his call.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You scraped over rocks and branches as it dragged you back to him. Just on the inside of the boundary, your chest seized again; but this time, it was from your lungs being jarred back into rhythm.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Your mind raced back into your body. As your senses came back, you howled in pain and scrambled away from him as far and as fast as you could. You shoved yourself between a thorny bush and a tree trunk, aiming to make yourself as small a target as physically possible. You exploded into tears and a litany of apologies and reasonings that fused into an incoherent mess.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He crossed over to you, fists clenching and unclenching. Twigs and bare branches crackled and snapped at his nearness. Leaves that turned their faces to his grace before cowered and curled into themselves in the face of his anger. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He certainly meant to toss you out again; and when he reached for you, you shrieked and lifted your hands to bat him away.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Please! No, I’ll be good! Nono!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>With your head burrowed so far down into your arms, you didn’t see him crouch next to you. Nor did you see the array of expressions flitting across his face. The touch that came wasn’t angry as you expected; it was careful. He uncovered your head and lifted your chin.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Say that again.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His voice was gruff, gravely, but it wasn’t as filled with hate. You blinked up at him through wet lashes and sniffled in the most unattractive way. He brushed his pristine thumb across your dirty mouth. Striving to calm yourself, you looked away, but he wouldn’t have it. He turned your face back to front and met your scared stare with a level one.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I s-said I’ll be good.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He shook his head ever so slightly, and your face crumpled into a mess of ugly all over again at his displeasure. Slowly, he smoothed the lines on your forehead, just as he had before. It wasn’t gentle; it was more that he seemed to dislike them and didn’t want them there.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Before that, lamb.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If he meant to calm you, his instruction had the opposite effect. Your body quaked under the effort to contain the sobs; and when you tried to speak, they broke loose. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He wanted you to apologize some more. He wanted to hear you beg for his kindness. Shriveling further back, you jerked away from his hands because he would only get angry all over again.  Silent, unwavering, he dug his fingers into the bony part of your knee, the command implicit. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You choked on the dread but obeyed, smart enough, finally, to learn the lesson.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I said I’m sorry.” You had to stop to expel the worried breath you’d been nurturing. “I said I only wanted to go outside.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You saw his features change this time, and you watched as his clenched fists eased. It was almost surprise you saw playing at the corners of his eyes, and you stared, mesmerized, as the storm clouds around his pupils abated. Pressing his pillowy lips into a hard line, he nodded and reached out to grasp your upper arms, digging in when you attempted to wrestle free.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Take a breath. This will hurt.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You chittered an objection, but he only directed your gaze to your sides. In your lunacy, you’d wedged yourself directly into a Crown of Thorns bush, and a multitude of its offerings now decorated and pierced your clammy skin. You hadn’t felt a single thorn, so complete was your meltdown.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Any further hysterics would only worsen your situation. If the bath’s temperature changed with your fear, you pictured these thorns lengthening with it, shredding you for your foolishness. Battling yourself to stillness, you plastered your stare to the very center of his torso and took as even of a breath as you could muster. Turning loose fingers to tight fists, you tried to ground and ready yourself. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Abruptly, he stood, tearing you from the offending foliage. To be brave, you chewed the inside of your cheek to keep from crying out, but some emotion and pain still spilled over your stained cheeks and chin. He set you on your feet but held you through the off-balance sway and buckle of your knees.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You couldn’t bring yourself to look up at him because you didn’t know what to do now. He told you before that he would not keep saving you from your own stupidity, and you wagered this counted as high on the stupid list. He’d also literally thrown you out of not only his keep, where the magic healing bath was, but his very land. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know what you want me to do.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was scarcely more than a whisper, and the honesty you poured into that one sentence shocked even you. But what else could you do? You weren’t alive any longer. To leave here meant the end of existence. You also weren’t getting any nearer to your goal, the promise he withheld.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Take this off.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Deft fingers tugged the hem of his shirt up over your hip, but you dared not blink, beg, or even breathe. You fought the impulse to squirm and shucked the thing slowly, trying in vain to not vocalize your discomfort as the thing jostled and disrupted the thorns in your flesh. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Despite your nervousness, your body warmed for him, swelling and tightening in all the right places. Your sex pulsed. Your nipples stiffened. Saliva pooled under your tongue. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And all you could think was that maybe he would finally fuck you.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Have you always been such a stupid girl?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The question shocked you from your stupor and drew up your head. He crowded into your space and obscured the extravagant, amazing, twilight-tinted details just beyond with his flawless face and indescribable beauty. His voice was no longer poisonous; rather, it was almost puzzled, weighted with something you likened to fascination.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Compared to his forever of unwavering duty, you were just another free-willed human, a wee babe in the face of divinity. Could it be that your curiosity, your recklessness captivated him? Interrupted the monotony of eternity with just a bit of idiotic life?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You had no answer. Yes, you’d always been a stupid girl. Yes, to him, you would always be a stupid girl. But you couldn’t bring yourself to say it, even if it would appease the only particular god you wanted to grant you favors. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Close your eyes.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Pinching your chin lightly, he tipped your face up further, thumbing your lower lip until you parted both. This time, you were certain you heard it — the ‘good girl’ barely on his breath. It slithered through you and liquefied each nerve and neuron. You wanted to hear him say it again, to make him say it again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Your lashes fluttered against hot cheeks, and you were just about to disobey, just about to open your eyes when you felt something warm on your lips, wet but tacky. Your tongue darted out to test it, finding that familiar taste he always gave you right before he left.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crestfallen, you forced your lips together so they wouldn’t quiver and nodded. He would leave you to... whatever you were supposed to do here. Pull out the thorns one by one, you guessed. Sleep on the ground. Live on the outskirts until he tired of you.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The brush of his thumb came again, though, along with a new smudge of that sticky, dark honey. Your temperature skyrocketed, and you hitched up onto your toes on a whimper. You clutched at the shirt covering his ribs to keep yourself upright; and when the third smear of that ambrosia came, you felt the very second you caught fire.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was velvet down your scratchy throat, a sizzle in your fingertips and toes, and electricity throughout every muscle and bone. Beads of sweat sprung up to mingle with goosebumps, and your breath quickened to match the pounding tempo of your heart. On a low moan, you licked the last remnants away and bit at your own lip, lamenting the absence of that exquisite taste.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He rewarded the sensuous sounds you made with a scorching kiss, and you fell headlong into his lips, his arms, his body. Brazen, drunkenly bold, you wrapped your arms tight around his neck and molded yourself to him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Too soon, the pleasant flames licking at your insides tipped over to needling, a constant stinging just beneath skin that suddenly felt too tight, too itchy. Tingling turned to angry pins and needles, and you hopped from one foot to the other. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Burns,” you whimpered it against his mouth. “Hurts.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He cradled your head and wrapped his arm so tight around your middle that you could scarcely breathe, but it kept you from wiggling free to run rabid into something else stupid. You tangled twitching fingers into his soft curls just to have something to hold on to as the fever he put upon you raged hotter.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s what happens to stupid girls who don’t mind their surroundings.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He mouthed the admonishment into your jaw line, not even disconnecting to speak. Even through your torment, you brooded, which only earned you a derisive chuckle, but he made you forget the self-pity with another candied taste of his tongue.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His clothes were too rough; his body was too solid. The tight embrace he trapped you in was too suffocating; it stoked the inferno inside your core. Panic rose up to dance with desire, and adrenaline sent you reeling. Your delighted chirps and whimpers toppled over into anxious objections. You contorted inside your delectable cage, suddenly needing to get away, be apart.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was too much. He was too much.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He gripped and parted your buttocks, keeping you pinned. The chilly air lapped at your heated entrance and swirled around your tight pucker. It was just different enough, just the right balance to soothe your worry. You moaned shamelessly and rubbed against him like a feline in heat. He let your ass cheeks drop with a bounce and delivered a slap so hard to the left side that you hiccuped.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Breaking the sexy spell, he ceased his attack and nudged at your nose with his.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Better?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Finally brave enough to open your eyes, your breath caught at the sight of him. He also flushed from arousal. His lips were just as kiss-swollen. His eyes blazed, kaleidoscopes of craving flitting from color to color.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It did something to you to know you’d done that. You’d roused death to the whirlwind of living want and need.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mmhmm.” You stared at his mouth for a long, long time, working up the courage to ask. “Still not ready?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He said nothing. In that silence, he searched your face for something you weren’t sure he would see. When finally he shook his head no, you licked your lips and looked over his shoulder to the billowing divide.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Can I,” you faltered, not sure you could deliver but aching to try, “can I do something for you?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Your question caught him off guard. You watched it play out on his face, something almost like appeasement, pride.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Another time.” He smirked and set you down, pulling your arms from his neck. “Let me see you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Your brow furrowed, and you nearly crossed your arms in petulant defiance. He had whipped you into such a frenzy that you’d forgotten all about the thorns embedded in your tender flesh until he bent to brush away mud and grime from your outer thigh.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You gasped and started feeling yourself all over, hands rubbing where there should be wounds. Astonishingly, there was not a single thorn to be found. Whatever he’d fed you had ground them to nothing more than dirt, and he had spared you from the worst of it with all that delicious distraction.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Gratitude danced on the tip of your tongue, but he scooped you up into his arms before you could let it loose. Tucking your head under his chin, you curled into his chest and did your best to keep quiet.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If he was carrying you home, you didn’t want him to change his mind.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But when did it become home?</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. With Firm Faith</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>It was three steps. Three steps and a world away.</p><p>A hundred questions rose in your throat. Did he speak to them? What did he say? Could they see him? Would you be comforted if that version of The Ren was the last thing you saw? What did the team moving behind and around him actually do? What happened to these people after they died?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Hail Leia, full of grace and blessed among women," you grimaced through the prayer, twisting in the sheets, all composure lost.</p><p>After the row at the Demarcation, and the nights after, he took you to his bed.</p><p>He no longer chased you down in the hallways for his kisses. He saved them. Every day, he scooped you up from wherever you were in the keep, herded you into his bed, and plied you with hungry kisses until you squirmed with senseless desire.</p><p>He didn’t immediately leave, either. After that bourbon butterscotch flavor rolled over your tongue, he would capture your gaze, mesmerizing you with the way his irises never quite picked a single hue. Like this, every time, he spun you into spellbound sleep.</p><p>Sometimes, he stayed with you. You would wake up groggy and entangled in his sculpted limbs. He told you it was because your nightmares drove you to somnolent sobbing, the sounds of which echoed annoyingly.</p><p>You remembered them all. Dreams of your family, their deaths, your journey here, and its purpose.</p><p>Any moment you had his attention, you tried to ask about the bargain you’d struck, but he would brush the words away from your lips, rubbing at them absently. In exchange, he would answer another question.</p><p>Sort of.</p><p>You learned that there truly had been countless others to sacrifice themselves for his favors, and you were right about the altar being stained with blood over time, but he wouldn’t tell you how many he’d actually granted. He confirmed that he tracked the passage of time, but his answer confused you. Nothing here was linear, he said. He simply liked the sound of the clock moving ever forward.</p><p>Last night, you asked how many he’d brought back here, kept as a pet, but his eyes darkened with irritation. Then, because foolish was your genetic code, you asked what made you not ready to make good on your end of the deal. On the heels of your stupid curiosity, you’d slept alone.</p><p>Besides waking up disoriented next to a deity, he kept you in a constant state of arousal. With kisses that would melt marble, nips to your earlobe that raised goosebumps, and the barest brush of knuckles against your flushing skin. He was relentless, ensuring that it was, in fact, only a matter of time before you begged him to fuck you.</p><p>It was this sweaty, weighty, vulgar need that sent your hands roaming, mapping the curves and valleys of your body. You pressed your face into his pillow to inhale the sickly sweet aroma that lingered. You groaned and twisted, feeling light-headed and too full of raw energy for your limbs.</p><p>Try as you might to endure his delicious torture chastely, you could only handle so much before the screaming in your cunt demanded you take action.</p><p>Digging your fingernails in roughly, you scratched angry red tracks into your inner thighs and the outer, meaty labia in an attempt to subvert the craving, but it only loosed a shudder that lifted your shoulders off the bed. </p><p>It would be fine, you coached yourself. He was never here. Just a bit, just a touch would be fine.</p><p>Letting your knees fall apart wide, you surged into a painful arch as your fingers connected with your long neglected clit. You skipped everything else; there was no need for foreplay or build up. You hit that wet hot target and worked it desperately, hurriedly.</p><p>“Is this what you do when I’m not here?”</p><p>You shrieked as his voice broke through the commotion in your brain.  You rolled away to hide what you were doing, burning with shame and bristling with unsatisfied lust, but he caught your ankle and pulled you down the bed. Your shirt, his that you’d been wearing since he caught you in it, hitched up around your ribs, baring the evidence of your hunger.</p><p>He crawled onto the bed’s corner, inching nearer, and you couldn’t make yourself breathe.</p><p>He skimmed your inner thighs, tickling through the stickiness, and tutted at what he found there. Easing down to lie beside you, he turned your face to his and pressed his now tart fingers to your mouth.</p><p>“Harlot.”</p><p>It was a low rumble, nearly a purr; and in response, your pussy clenched hard around nothing. Dipping his head down slightly, he caught your gaze and held it, the entrancing array of changing color and depth beckoning you in.</p><p>You couldn’t have looked away for anything in the Galaxy. It was murky and hypnotic. And when he slipped his fingertips past your lips, you were gone.</p><p>“Look at you,” he said, peering into your very soul. “I quite like you like this. Mindless, panting, begging to be filled.”</p><p>Slipping wide fingers beneath your jagged collar, he held you to the bed, a physical counterpart to his mental bondage. His free hand wandered, squeezing your breasts, barely grazing through your dewy sex. Emptying you of everything but this all-encompassing yearning.</p><p>“Concentrate, little lamb.” He nipped at your lower lip to draw your fluttering eyelids back open and your eyes to focus upon him. “What shall I say to bring you back here? Hm?”</p><p>Your insides pooled to lava, painting your thighs and perfuming the air. Your lips wobbled, the feeling building and threatening to tip you over. You were little more than insatiable, feral need made human; and from somewhere, your gray matter produced only supplication.</p><p>“...please.”</p><p>Please put your hands, your mouth, your dick in me, on me, somewhere, anywhere. Please let me cum for you. Please please please please.</p><p>His lips tugged up into a smirk. His eyes flashed with a devilish spark. He leaned down to line his mouth up with the lobe of your ear, his cool breath eliciting a delectable shiver. He was ice to your fire, and you wanted nothing more than to die of hypothermia.</p><p>“All right, girl.” His fingers lazily pet your pussy, just a hint of pressure. “I’ll say it.  I’ll say please; and when I do, you’ll feel exactly this way — swollen with want, throbbing and feverish, your cunt aching to be stretched and used.”</p><p>Absent his narcotic stare, your eyes slammed tight shut on an obscene moan. Sluggishly, your mind worked its way around to functioning, and you clutched at his sleeves with all your might. The thinking part of your brain knew this was manipulation, that he was conditioning you to behave the way he wanted.</p><p>The rest of you couldn't care less.</p><p>Nearly there, you dug your toes into the soft covers and tipped your hips in just that right way. If he stayed right there for another moment… If you could just hang onto the way you were feeling right now…</p><p>As though he could hear the pitiful pleas inside your mind, he pushed his thumb into your mouth to smear that candied drug across your tongue, and your brain exploded. Your body bowed painfully as electricity sizzled up your spine and into your cranium. It was so tight and so sudden of an orgasm you left your body on a sharp cry.</p><p>You felt unstable, combustible, and you could do nothing but writhe and shout as the satisfied seizure rolled through you. He spoke through it all, his voice raspy and barely controlled, but whatever he said was lost, each word a victim of the inferno.</p><p>At the other side, where you were wrung dry and buzzing from head to toe, guilty tears stung your eyes.</p><p>You shouldn’t feel this good. You shouldn’t feel good at all until your purpose here was fulfilled. The purpose he kept you from. And the reward he withheld. Sniffling, you pushed at his shoulder and tried to wiggle from beneath his hands.</p><p>Whatever sort of intimate moment this was passed quickly, and the man who’d coaxed you to the sort of orgasm you’d never had before shifted into stoic silence. His features hardened, and his eyes grew cold. Grasping your upper arm, he slid from the bed with you in tow. </p><p>You didn't understand what you’d done; but finally, you knew better than to speak.</p><p>You jogged next to him, trying in vain to not dawdle, but his legs were so ridiculously long that you struggled to keep up. The dismal, narrow hallway opened up into an immense room so breathtaking you stalled. The walls stretched up forever and disappeared into a sparkling night sky. Sconces twinkled about the room, firelight dancing inside demure, perfectly spherical glass bulbs. You stared at the oddity of it so long you crashed directly into your captor, who had stopped to open a chest at the foot of what you decided was the largest throne you’d ever see.</p><p>Too intrigued to let it go, you tugged yourself free so you could investigate the lights. You stood on your toes, trying to get a better look. On a gasp, it registered for you just as he spoke your name.</p><p>Stars. The sconces held stars.</p><p>You marveled at how, daily, you found something to remind you that you were in The Ren’s clutches. He didn’t just create flowers; he made luscious killers. It wasn’t just a bath; it was magic water. They weren’t just lights; it was trapped starlight.</p><p>That cosmic snap cracked to draw your attention, punctuating the vast difference between you as a human and him as decidedly not.  </p><p>Once you were within his grasp, he stole your shirt in seconds and tossed it over his shoulder as a cadre of men walked into the room. You covered your breasts and squeezed your thighs together, shooting him an angry stare, but he only slapped your hands away and wrapped something long, flowing, and midnight blue around you.</p><p>“As much as I enjoyed you in my shirt, lamb, it’s time for something different.”</p><p>It resembled a cloak, but with sleeves and a hood, and the flowing bottom portion barely covered you. All he had to do was move one fold aside, and you would be on lewd display. He buttoned the thing around you, tucking the sides in about your breasts, lingering to skim a knuckle over one until it tightened for him.</p><p>You didn’t know if you should say thank you. Everything he did was for himself, for his pleasure; so, you didn’t think this was a gift just for you. Pressing your lips into a thin line, you watched him for any hint as to what you should do next.</p><p>In the very center of the room was a massive, free-standing obsidian wall, toward which you were hastily led. Bewildered, you frowned at the dull shine of the thing, at the subtle ripple radiating out from the center, at the way you could almost hear voices the closer you got.</p><p>What came next, though, set you to anxiously fidgeting.</p><p>The Ren stood to one side, and the unit of men who’d appeared from nowhere took up flank. You faced that wall, trapped by the wraiths hulking between you and what you now considered safety. Stealing your focus, the god to your left tipped your face up and searched it for what felt like an agonizingly long time. Etched into his beautiful features was uncertainty, doubt, but what was he looking for? What was he deciding?</p><p>“Close your eyes.”</p><p>His tone was gentler than you expected, and his fingers didn’t gouge into your skin the way they had when he was angry. With his heavy arm about your shoulder, he tucked you in tight against his body.</p><p>It was three steps. Three steps and a world away.</p><p>When his hold loosened, you lifted your head and peered out from beneath his shroud.  You stood onto your toes and looked over his shoulder, piecing it all together. What you thought was a wall was more like a window, a portal to anywhere, it seemed. On that side was the keep you knew, the familiar corridors and rooms you’d started to figure out.</p><p>On this side was a whistling, wicked wind, prophetic gray clouds, and a raging battle. The Ren, too, had transformed. He towered above you, a looming destiny. The cozy shroud you just enjoyed came alive, whipping and billowing around its Master. Worse, a terrible black helmet and mask hid his face. The visor was an onyx void, not reflecting even the smallest shard of light.</p><p><b>This</b> was The Ren you expected that first day.</p><p>Subconsciously, you took a step away, but a hard glove latched onto your biceps, and the hammer of your heartbeat intensified.</p><p>“Stay here.” The voice that came from inside the helmet was crisp, almost hollow, and you shied away from it. “You touch nothing. You speak to no one. You <em> stay here.” </em></p><p>Dumbstruck, you nodded, ready to prove that you could be more than an idiot girl. They left you at the top of a knoll in the very center of a haunted, stormy sky. Mere steps away, The Ren’s red death saber blazed into existence.</p><p>The weight of what you saw dropped you to the ground. The stories were true. He was a ghastly specter, and he reaped in a carmine haze.</p><p>The vastness of the universe shrank to this hill, this battlefield.  It was all you could process. Gunshots rang out. Blaster fire shot sparks high into the air. Muffled shouts and curses mingled with wailing, with horror and hurt. The boom of a bomb in the distance infused your very marrow with terror, even if you weren’t sure you could die here.</p><p>Swallowing down your fear, you tracked the only thing you knew.</p><p>Through the fray, The Ren’s path was measured, purposeful. He whirled from fighter to fighter, spinning agilely to miss those who weren't ready for him, but it wasn’t clear if he ever spoke. Each time he paused, still as stone, interminable seconds would pass; and then, they would fall, lifeless.</p><p>A hundred questions rose in your throat. Did he speak to them? What did he say? Could they see him? Would you be comforted if <b>that</b> version of The Ren was the last thing you saw? What did the team moving behind and around him actually do? What happened to these people after they died?</p><p>A warbled sound interrupted your fascination, and you hunted for its origin. Your breath caught at the sight of a young man at the bottom of your hill. Attempting to crawl away from the battle, he hiccuped and sobbed on each painful inch gained.</p><p>In a flash, you succumbed to stupid and threw yourself down the hill. Scrambling near to him, you cursed this day, these people because he was just a boy, barely old enough to hold a weapon. There was no way to know if he had been sold to war or was trying to defend his home; but either way, he was too young to be here.</p><p>Conscious of at least some of your instructions, you didn’t touch him, but doing nothing to relieve this boy’s suffering was out of the question. His distressed howls cracked apart your heart.</p><p>You knew that pain.</p><p>Lips trembling, you lay down beside him and pressed your face to the grass near his wounded head. You had no idea if he could see or hear you, but you had to try; and at the first sound of your voice, his panic lessened. He bit down on his lip to keep from crying, listening intently, and you strove to make your voice as kind and warm as your Nona’s always was.</p><p>
  <em> We believe in the Balance, Grandfather Sky Walker, and the makers of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> We believe in our Fathers, the rightful heirs of the Galaxy, born before all others and all ages. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> We believe they made the Balance for our salvation. For our sake, the Fathers hold creation and death in their hands, and we believe them to be just, steadfast, and eternal. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> We believe in one true way and the promise of peace in the Balance. We strive to live it, day by day, that we will be fairly judged at the hour of our death. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> With firm faith, we make this proclamation and pray it reaches the ears of our Fathers, for theirs is the way, the life, and the Balance. </em>
</p><p>At the end of your litany, your young warrior was calm. His fingers loosely held his chest, splayed over his heart. He had joined you in prayer; and though you weren’t certain he could see you, he was looking directly at you with such gratitude, such grace and love.</p><p>It was a long moment before you realized the boy’s wasn’t the only gaze on you.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Still In The Middle</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>This was it. This was the moment for which you’d bargained so hard, for which you’d nearly begged, about which you’d dreamed. This was the deal.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Please note: Potential triggers for dub-con/difficult loss of virginity.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>You knew fear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jumping from the roof. Fending off thieves. A target on your planet. The horror of not knowing if your family survived. Even here, in Ren’s land, you knew fear. The certainty that he truly had carved you open from cunt to crown.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All mere drops in the ocean compared to now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hovered, a walking omen promising retribution and withering the very air with his distaste for your nonsense. You shrank from it, from him. You weren't even sure he moved, but you lifted your hand against the attack that surely would come and instinctively launched yourself between The Ren and the boy, shielding the dying from death as though you could bargain with fate.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When next he spoke, it wasn’t to you, nor was it in a language you could identify. His voice, though modulated to mask his otherworldly inflection, was even as he addressed the boy to your side. As he finished, your young warrior slumped back into the grass, and Ren’s saber crackled brighter for a brief second.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You stared, speechless as your brain processed the events. Once departed from the body, did the soul spend eternity inside that vermilion host? Was that all the afterlife was?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Your dark specter gave you no time to further ponder or ask silly questions. Gloved fingers shoved beneath your collar and jerked you to a stand. By that guide, he threw you forward, pointing at the hilltop.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Walk!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The ire in his mechanical tone numbed you to the marrow, but you wisely, silently, marched up the hill you’d earlier flown down. Near the summit, you bent forward to crawl the rest of the incline, offered no help by the reaper at your heels. You half expected an angry kick to your backside to send you sprawling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At the top, you waited. Only he knew the way home. Only he could conjure it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You prayed that your quiet would win you a modicum of favor, some semblance of pardon for finally learning at least one lesson, but you yelped when his fingers found purchase at your neck once more. His rough handling sent jagged black edges into your skin, scratching and marring your tender flesh.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In seconds, you abandoned what you were so pleased with yourself for, grasping at his wrist and forearm while babbling about how he was hurting you. He ignored your fit, gripped your arm impossibly tight, and dragged you through the suddenly there umbra and into his keep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Back in familiar territory, he stomped through the hallways, his heavy footsteps echoing dreadfully. Bile rose, sour and acrid. Your heart skipped. And when he tossed you across the threshold of the room, you stumbled and fell face first into the opulent expanse of his bed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stay here, I said.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He seethed, slowly removing his helmet. Your throat swelled shut at the outright disdain you saw etched into his marble features.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Speak to no one." </span>
</p><p>
  <span>You scrambled away, attempting to put as much space between you and the bogeyman as possible, but it was in vain. He stepped closer and threw his gloves at you, one to punctuate each word you had ignored.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Touch nothing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was no terror in the galaxy akin to this. He was uncompromising, unnerving, unkind. He only had to think it, and you would be but a smudge on his floor, no longer interrupting his peace with your fumbling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Plastering yourself against the far wall, you shook your head, but you didn’t know why. He was clear in his instructions, and you disobeyed. Blatantly. Flagrantly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“H-he was frightened.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It sounded ludicrous, even to you.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Every molecule of oxygen in the room froze with his icy stare. Each haphazard exhale was laced with frost. The world around you turned unwelcoming, harsh.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They are all frightened!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His shout broke the sound barrier, cracking like a bomb.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>On a scream, you turned away, pressing your face and palms flat against the slab wall. You felt it when he advanced on you, crossing the room in only a few steps. His hands slammed into stone on either side of your head, and you buckled, slumping downward only for him to catch you and pin you in place.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you enjoy being an idiot? Was it worth it to play nursemaid?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something about his condescension cut through your fear. It settled in your gullet and solidified in your larynx.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Turning your face to him, you blinked hard when your nose bumped his, not expecting such closeness. You smelled that candied taste on his breath, the narcotic caramel you came to crave. You wished you hadn’t looked. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He was afraid, and I could help. It isn’t stupid.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His sleek, dark brow cocked over one glittering eye, but you couldn't tell if it was because he accepted your reason or was simply surprised you spoke at all. His thumb grazed a particularly large cut, eliciting a wince; and with great effort, you didn’t jerk away. As his fingers trailed down the length of your neck, you watched his eyes follow. They dropped to your throat, and you didn’t miss the way his gaze roved over the newly raised cuts and scratches from his hasty manhandling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But when those chameleon irises lifted back to your face, you forgot how to even think.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You could have died.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His melodic voice was hard, teeming with irritation but in a low tone. Those long fingers you couldn’t help but enjoy looking at wrapped around your neck and shoved you back into the wall on a mean thump. His everything was intoxicating, rendering you witless with little more than his presence. He didn’t simply cage you; he engulfed you, swallowed you whole.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I…” Your face pinched, wondering if it was your safety that concerned him or the precarious nature of your bargain. “I didn’t know that. You didn't tell me. But I’m here. I’m not dead.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The next words out of your mouth were a gamble.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Still in the middle."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The temperature of the room changed, rising as his ire subsided. His knuckles dragged along your neck once more, and you gulped on reflex. The preternatural sluggishness of your heartbeat improved as the trail of his touch extended down your sternum. A flush spread through you, warming you and raising goosebumps in the wake of his light trek.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes.” Pushing from the wall, he slipped his fingers beneath the ring once more and tugged you against him. “Yes, you are.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a loud sizzle and pop from behind him, jarring both of you back to your senses. A frown flitted across his face - annoyance at something other than you. You couldn’t help but feel relief. As much as you wanted to stand on your toes to see what happened, you only reached to steady yourself by both hands circling his wrist.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“When I come back, I want this gone.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tugged the neckline of the cloak, waited for your acquiescent nod, and whirled from the room in a flurry of billowing black. You waited, glued to the spot, for a solid 60 count before sagging into the wall.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You lost track of how long it took him to return. Disrobed and discombobulated, you sat in the very center of the bed until you could scarcely hold your eyes open. You burrowed under the soft, ebony pelts and succumbed to anxious exhaustion. The events of the day... and yesterday... and the day before that all bled together into a heaviness you could no longer ignore.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A chill woke you. Without opening your eyes, you groused and searched for the cover to your cozy den.  Instead, you brushed your fingers along what could only be skin and jolted awake to find a naked statue of a man brushing a kiss to your knee, your thigh, your hip. He crawled up your body, pausing only to kiss your ribs or lick at an already distended nipple.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When finally he settled his weight between your thighs, you choked and coughed, turning your head away from his chuckle. The feel of him was heavenly, but the knowledge of why he was on you was torture.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This was it. This was the moment for which you’d bargained so hard, for which you’d nearly begged, about which you’d dreamed. This was the deal.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At the behest of his overwhelming nearness, your body came alive. Tightening. Swelling. Lengthening. A shudder worked its way through your limbs. Your core heated, readying for its intruder. It was shameful how quickly you responded to him; but when his lips met the thundering of your pulse, you still whimpered wantonly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A throb took hold of you, riding your increasing heart rate to even the very ends of your toes. Your opening pulsed a dangerous new rhythm your squirming hips attempted to ease. The pleased noise in your ear paralyzed you, but the body atop yours shifted. His wide hips rocked into yours in such a delicious way you were again tempted to lift and roll.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Redistributing his weight, Ren slithered his fingers down between your legs and brushed them against your labia, teasing and testing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Still think you’re ready for me, pet? Shall we find out?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alarmed, you barely had time to push at his shoulder and squeak out ‘n-no no!’ before the fat head of his dick pushed inside. You threw your head back on a sharp cry and clutched at the bed desperately. It was a knife to your middle, a spear in your cunt, and you howled in pain.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Disregarding your discomfort, he forced more of his length into your pussy on a groan, pushing down on your hip to keep you still.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Who last fucked you, little lamb? Did they do such a poor job your cunt won't allow another in?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Your body went rigid, clamping shut so tight he grimaced.  Your hips dropped into a deep cradle, seeking a bit of relief, but your feet scrambled against the bed in a furious attempt to get away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No! Nobody!” You wailed, panic-stricken, and frantically tried to push at his stomach, but he was immovable. You crumbled into despairing sobs, shaking your head. “I haven’t!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We have a long way to go, girl.” He bit at your neck at the same time he rocked further into you, drawing another harrowing plea from your ragged chest. “Pretending you’re a virgin won’t make me kind. Ruined by men, remember?.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Trembling hands lifted to shield your face, to hide the pitiful tears. It wasn’t only that it hurt; you were overwhelmed by how displeasing you knew yourself to be. And how displeasing your next words would be.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That wasn’t me.” Your voice was hardly there, cracking on the feeling and fear swirling inside your gut.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ren stalled completely; and with him, all the galaxy went quiet. You heard only the whistling tunnel between your ears; and when you opened your eyes, you found him glaring down at you with such malice your blood ran cold.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mind your words. There are no ghosts here, despite what you’ve been taught. Just you. And me."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was more than a command; it was a challenge.  ‘Tell me I’m wrong,’ his eyes read. ‘Ridiculous girl,’ the hard line of his lips said.  Idiotically, you jumped on the bait.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Y-you said men ruined me. N-not me.” You sniffled and blinked away stinging tears, trying to focus on his face. “I just didn’t argue.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Pushing up on one hand, he glared down at you for what felt like an eternity. You chewed your lower lip, trying to decipher the look on his face and the strange gleam in his eyes. But as long as he grilled you like this, he wasn’t hate fucking your miserable pussy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You... you didn’t seem to like virgins.” You glanced down, trying to keep the wobble of your lips under control.  “I didn’t think it would be so… difficult.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You hated how juvenile you sounded, how utterly absurd the words coming out of your mouth were. Ever since you came here, you wanted him to see you as an adult, but you were still a fucking child, unable to even do the damn thing you sold yourself to.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>However, you also drowned in self-pity. Your words were true, but what you didn’t say was ‘Your cock is a fucking monster, and it absolutely will not fit,’ which was also true. How could you have known this wouldn’t work? There was no way your body would accept all of him, and that meant your family would pass into obscurity, unremembered and unavenged.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You wept anew, disappointed with yourself and wrenched open to the very bottom of your heart.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The distrust and contempt veiling his features eased, and those beautiful lips pursed. His amused hum quieted a bit of your worry, as did the way he released his angry grip on your hip. He even dislodged himself a bit from your battered cunt, allowing the hurt to abate.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He brushed tears from your cheeks and turned your face back to his.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What have you had between these pretty thighs, lamb?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You flushed at his intimate question, hands pushing at his ribs, trying to coerce him into vacating your core completely.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Instead, he lowered himself onto you, dragging his lips along your jaw. This time, the burden of his body soothed your upset, tempered the ache in your soul. His mouth nipped and sucked until he found a spot that made you shiver. He threaded strong fingers into your hair and rubbed at the back of your scalp, keeping you right where he wanted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fingers…” It was scarcely a whisper, a sin you almost couldn’t admit out loud. “Lips…” Fire blew through your chest and cheeks, but there was no denying the last bit. “Blade handle…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something delicious rumbled in his chest at the memory you conjured. You felt it resonate against yours and wiggled, immediately regretting doing so from the reminder of his stabbing dick at your cunt’s entrance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Blessedly, he withdrew completely; but still, you whimpered, both relieved by and lamenting the loss, though it was hardly even a moment before that hard column slid between your puffy labia and nudged at your clit and hood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Please, I don’t think I ca--”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He executed your excuse with a bite to your lower lip. He devoured any ensuing complaints with a fervent kiss, tying up your tongue to keep you muted. He derailed you completely, expertly leading you away from nervousness with his firm lips and tugging teeth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His hands roamed and fondled and caressed. His hips led yours, coaxing your pelvis to dance to his tune. In just minutes, he dismantled your fear and replaced it with anticipation, with the heady scent of your arousal. Hooking one hand beneath your knee, he drew your legs apart wider, purring when your body naturally followed his lead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With your hips in motion, he caught that hot ridge with the end of his dick and pressed in once again. You shriveled in fear, cursing yourself for believing he would let it go.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Breathe.” His lips at your ear promised salvation, a gentleness in contrast to what he was doing to your pussy. “Move with me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His large hand wrapped all the way around your ample hip, thumb and digits digging into the supple flesh. Where his sedative voice once mollified you, it now only raised your heckles. You were too far gone to the mental imagery of what he said to you on the altar.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>How many have died screaming at the end of my dick?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can’t! It won’t…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It will.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He growled the words out. Tired of listening to your complaints, he tipped your face to his and crushed you with a kiss. The strangled sound at the back of your throat only had him licking further into the moist cavern, as though he could catch it with his tongue tip.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Distracted by his cloying taste, your body obeyed this time. Your thighs hugged his sides. Your hips undulated to accept his slow prodding deeper and deeper at each pass. Your fingers no longer gouged at his pecs, but splayed wide across them. Soon, you gasped and curved like a bow, unable to be still and ready to be shot like an arrow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Wide eyed, you panted and clung to him, vibrating and filled to the brim with his cock.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was like nothing you’d ever experienced before. You felt uncomfortably swollen and horribly hollow at the same time. Your pussy stretched to its tearing point. The sting was brutal but consuming in its torment. You wanted to beg him to never do this again and to never stop.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Your every cell was electric, buzzing under your skin and ensuring you felt every wicked inch, every carnal twitch of his dick.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good girl.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His dulcet tone danced across your lips, chased by a lick to the roof of your gaping mouth. You needed him to say it again, unnerved by how much those two words on his lips lit you up. You stared up into those mesmerizing eyes, trying to decide if he was pleased with you yourself or that you could fulfill your purpose.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But then, he started moving, and why he said what didn’t matter anymore.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It couldn’t have been more than a bit, but he pulled out, and the drag of it burned like nettles in your belly. When he pushed back in, you moaned softly, lifting your torso up into him to be even closer. Again, he tested the waters. His forward drive was harder, hips snapping. You bit your lip for composure, turning your mouth into his pulse, mirroring his gesture.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You didn’t realize that you held his hips until they worked in more of a rhythm; and by that time, you twisted below him, feverish and trying to match his building tempo. Strong, chiseled arms wrapped around you, one beneath your back to curve you upwards and one tucked under your head to keep your face turned into the crook of his neck.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was all you could do to keep up. He inundated you with his body, his smell, the taste of his sweat until you barely skirted reality. His steady pace, the captivating slide of his cock, spread a blissful thrum through you, sending your blood rushing, liquefying everything inside until the most debasing noises came from your pussy. He groaned at the squelch, the first sound he’d made in a while.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I—I’m sorry.” You whispered, lips quivering, eyes shining. “Am I doing it wrong?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You weren’t uneducated in this matter, but your knowledge only held up to a point.  A point you were now well beyond with this decadent deity lodged inside your inexperienced body. The possibility that your infantile humanity would again let him down tore at your resolve; and quickly, anguished tears fell along the sides of your face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His response was to fuck you harder, abandoning his care of your head to hoist your leg higher around his ribs so every lustful squish was clearer, louder. You squealed at each push, feeling fuller and fuller the faster he went. Your body opened, slickening and accepting him to your limit, but your brain decided it was punishment, that he was working harder to get over his discontent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“S-sorry. I can do better.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shut up, you stupid girl.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His words were clipped. He covered the entire lower half of your face with his massive hand. You whined into his palm, gutted that you’d gone from good to stupid so quickly yet again. One glorious thrust sent your eyes rolling back into your head, and you gripped his sides, dangling precariously at the edge of oblivion where what kind of girl you were no longer mattered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You want to do better? Hm?” He waited for your nod before carrying on. “Stop apologizing for the sounds your hungry cunt makes for me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The way he said the word set your insides to coiling. Tighter and tighter and tighter you wound. Captured by his gaze, you couldn’t look away, couldn’t stop trying to memorize the way he studied you. His face blushed an almost human shade of pink. His lips quivered as though he were about to say something, to praise or condemn in equal measure. But it was his endless, enthralling eyes that sliced you to the quick. He could certainly see every doubt, every criticism, every fear you’d ever had or made.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Laid wholly bare, you were profoundly grateful for his hand, for the hiding spot it afforded. The Ren was unraveling you in more ways than one; and though you couldn’t hide your teary eyes, you could hide the quake of your mouth and the feelings it telegraphed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Time to let go, lamb.” He nuzzled your wounded neck, tickling your skin with his words. “Prim and proper won't serve you here. Give in to me."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You writhed, overwrought with this emotion-laden eroticism until, finally, your chest stopped working altogether. Your brow drew tight, and you could no longer look directly at him.  Let go, he said. But control was the only thing that kept you alive in loneliness.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You arched painfully, the line of your spine twinging and sparking. Your silence broke, and you cried into his hand while your hips worked to lengthen the release, to draw it out as long as you could. It wasn’t like before, when he scrambled your brains with an orgasm that neared insanity. This was something that hooked into your soul and clawed it apart. In deferring to his will, the floodgates opened, washing you away in the torrent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It seemed to be what he was waiting for because the moment your hips loosened with release, he struck harder, faster. He moaned at the sound of you begging beneath his hand, even if you didn’t know what or who you were begging for. He pressed you down into the bed and wracked you with a fierce assault, bruising your face, forcing your sex wide open.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You flew too high to care.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He rode the crest of your endorphins, taking advantage of your dizziness to fuck you through the pain and anguish. He bade you listen to the lascivious language your pussy spoke for him and only him. He called you a good, filthy, dumb girl, and your heart panged at each syllable, somehow turning even the cruel ones to compliments in your euphoria.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Chasing a curse, he growled into your hair, plunged in deep, and flooded your wrecked cunt with his damned seed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Slogging back into your right mind, your fingers slid up his chest to push feebly as you were suffocated by his sheer size. The demanding hand that clamped over your face slid to cup your overheated cheek, thumb rubbing at your swollen mouth as you gasped for air. He brushed sweaty tresses from your face, traced the circumference of one bloodshot eye, and kissed the hollow of your throat, lingering over it for a long while.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Blinking to clear away the convulsions, you realized he was making sure your heartbeat didn’t slow further or stop altogether. As if to punctuate your conclusion, he gently stroked the pulse point of one wrist.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You wanted to move, to curl up into a ball and forget how to feel; but until he was ready, you would go nowhere. Closing your eyes, your thoughts drifted. Through memory and dreams, scripture and poetry. Half-murmured verses rolled across your tongue as sleep took hold.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was his brother, Ren, who counseled the Light Bringer to give of himself to create life. “Let them know you that they may live. Let them know me that they may die.” And thereafter, Solo created life. He flourished, fulfilling Grandfather Sky Walker’s wish and populating the farthest reaches of his galaxy with life. And Ren culled it, maintaining harmony. Keeping the Balance.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>You didn’t see that he stayed long after you fell asleep, listening to the cadence of your breathing, testing your pulse, laying his hand across your sternum to feel your heartbeat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As though you were now worthwhile and not just a stupid girl.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks for hanging in with me, y'all. I know the updates are coming further and further spaced out, but I'm trying to live as much of a life as I can.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Ten Words</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>At the mouth of his keep, the gaping maw carved into the side of a mountain, you stopped short of crossing the threshold. You folded your arms about your middle and chewed your upper lip, even taking a step back from it. He had reacted so violently to your original request that you, smartly, found this to be a dubious decision. It would surprise no part of you that he brought you here to test you, to see just how much of an idiot you still could be. Unsettled, you glued your eyes to the ground.</p>
<p>His voice, subtler than before and less agitated, broke through your anxious diatribe, and he tucked his hand beneath your upper arm and squeezed.</p>
<p>“You wanted to go outside.”</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>Dear Nona</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>I miss you more than I can say.  I’ve done something stupid, and I desperately need your guidance. It all started in Chandrila…</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sharing your troubles with Nona had always been your way of untangling the web, of shining a light on your confusion and turning it to the known.  But she wasn’t here. All you had was stolen paper and ink that smelled like ash.  For pages and pages, you poured out the details of your predicament until, finally, clarity sprung up from the dirty cobwebs of chaos. Leaf by leaf, it blossomed, sweeping away your doubt. Surprised by yourself, and this newfound understanding, you stared at the empty door frame in complete silence.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You couldn’t say how much time passed in your fugue, only that this world matched your quiet, lending weight to what you felt was a profound knowing, an awareness you previously lacked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It wasn’t until the King of this sleepy hollow appeared in the doorway that you blinked. Silent as the grave himself, he saturated you with his assessing stare. Tainted by the cool calculation, the omnipresent dislike he seemed to have for your human frailty, your blood thickened, sending a thrum to even the furthest reaches of your body.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It took him only a single stride to cross to the foot of the bed; and once made, it took only the span of his arm to reach you at the bed’s top. Wrapping exacting fingers around your ankle, he dragged you through paper, ink, and bedsheets until you sat at the foot, legs parted on either side of his wide body, back arched, and face tipped up by a knuckle at your chin.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Clothes. Paper.” He rubbed at your mouth with his thumb, chiding you in a way you didn’t think should be so arousing. “What will you steal next, hm?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You rolled your lips together because he wasn’t wrong. Everything you’d collected in your time here belonged to him; all of it snuck in his absences. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, your mother always said, but you weren’t so certain of that tactic here. Permission wasn’t something The Ren gave easily. Nor forgiveness.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It was a test, wasn’t it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You hadn’t planned to answer his question that way, and your jaw snapped shut so hard you winced. Even knowing how much he disliked it when you answered a question with a question, your brain still fired a mile a minute, tumbling over itself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His shifting gaze darkened, but an amused smirk played at his plump lips, accompanied by the lift of one eyebrow. He was humoring you; you knew the signs now. You lifted your chin away from his fingers and looked at the mass of his chest, brow furrowed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You thought taking me to that hilltop would kill me,” you nodded as though you still puzzled your way through it all, “Because I’m not like you. That’s why you said I could have died.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You chewed your cheek for a moment and carried on, absently toying with his shirttail as though he was your partner, your lover, rather than your gatekeeper, your captor. Your eyes trailed to the trickle at your forearm, to the spell he put upon you to keep you suspended in this new dimension of being and not.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s why everything here is dangerous to me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dissatisfied with the absence of your gaze, he tangled long fingers into your hair and, with a harsh grip, bowed you back so you were forced to look at him, so your chest grazed at his belly. Undaunted, you clung to him and rushed on. You weren’t sure if he would tell you, but the only way to know was to ask.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And whatever you’ve been feeding me,” you licked your lips at the memory of that seductively sweet taste you’d had just yesterday, “Made it so I didn’t. Right? But you weren’t sure it would work.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You knew he could see the last bit clawing at the inside of your brain, knew it painted your features. Holding your head hostage, he traced the obsidian collar around your neck slowly, pointedly, as though to mark the arc death would take in slicing open your neck.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Go on.” He shook your head slightly, as though to rattle your mind into functioning. “Say it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You gulped hard when his finger rested against your pulse. It hammered furiously, and you could feel it in your temples, chinking away at your ability to think. When the words came, they rode a whisper laden with uncertainty, upheaval.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And you wouldn’t fuck me until you knew I wouldn’t die.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His eyes flitted from you to the mess of parchment and blotchy words strewn across his bed.  “Figured out the cosmos, have we, lamb?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No.” Foolishly, you interrupted whatever he may have said next, but you shook your head in his grip anyway, keeping your eyes upon his contemplative features. “Just my place in it.” You gripped the black fabric at his hips, leaning into him for support.  “For now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Wisely, you stayed still, watching him as he evaluated you. His eyes darted from your wrinkled brow to your mouth. Then, lower to the dip of your throat. You wanted him to kiss you, as though he could taste your truthfulness on your tongue. You were far from knowing his capabilities, and your brow furrowed more when an additional question took root.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His entertained smirk turned mocking, judging as he watched it play across your face. For a second, you thought he’d answered your question with his features alone, that he truly could read your thoughts. If that were true, though, he’d surely have killed you before now for any of the unpleasantness you’d thought about him in your time here.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Casting off those thoughts, you winced and tried to back away from how his menacingly large body leaned at you. You reached up to wrap both hands around his wrist, needing the leverage as you tried to twist out of his grasp, but it was useless. He planted his knee on your groin, leaned his weight onto you, and pinned you like a bug beneath a magnifying glass.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was both exhilarating and horrifying. His nearness, the perfection of his physique made your mouth water, your guts boil. But his very existence, his purpose, laced your every breath with fear. You never forgot that he could do away with you at any time, at any whim. Displease him enough and you would no longer be in the middle. You would lose your family to the ravages of time, with no one to remember them at all.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“There’s no hiding from me here.” His voice was gravel, all hard edges and ire. “Speak.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His command, no different from what you’d give a pet, earned an annoyed snort on your part. Instantly, regret hit you like a freighter.  You clapped both hands over your mouth and wildly shook your head as though to convince him the act hadn’t been real. His narrow eyes and gritted teeth telegraphed enough for you to whimper, just like that frightened pet, and vault into begging.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nono!” You pressed at his chest urgently, pounding your fists against living granite. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! PleaseIdidn’tmeanitI’llbegood!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How many more times will you say it for it to be true?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The corners of your mouth turned down; you could feel it. You couldn’t disagree. How many times had Nona chastised you for heeding your mother’s words? Forgiveness; not permission. Your lips wobbled. Your chin quivered. Dread weighted your voice.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sorry.” You splayed both hands across his pectorals, trying to not get caught up because, in fact, you felt a very muted, very slow pulse. “I’m trying to be good. You…” Mashing your lips together, you sniffled and stole a minute to figure out what to say next. “You’re not supposed to be real.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>But you are,</span>
  </em>
  <span> you thought. </span>
  <em>
    <span>You are, and you think I’m an idiot, and nothing I do will be right.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You hoped that it conveyed enough, that you wouldn’t have to say ‘I’m trying not to die every second I am here.’ You hoped that your face showed him you stayed here with him despite your fear, that the caress of your open hands told him your fight-or-flight response was dampened into delay.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Perhaps it was the pitiful look in your eye; or perhaps it was the tremble of your mouth that gave him pause. That ever-scrutinizing gaze bored into you for the longest of moments; and then, he stood up so abruptly you fell back against the mattress with a surprised huff.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Onto the bed next to you fell the cloak you wore at the battlefield and a pair of heavy, black boots.  You didn’t dare make a move and waited for him to say something, to give you any sign or instruction. But he sucked all the air out of the room with his preternatural calmness, and you realized he was waiting for you to obey the unspoken command and dress.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Taking a deep breath, and then another, you plucked one boot up into unsteady fingers and bent forward to shove your foot into it. A wholly unladylike grunt popped free as you tugged on the sides to get your heel in. Blowing hair away from your face, you worked for what felt like an eternity to lace the damn thing up your calf. By the time you finished with the second, you were lightheaded, sweaty, and irritated.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The last time you ventured out,” he admonished, “You inserted yourself into a thorny bush.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His rebuke caused your nose to wrinkle. The last time you were out, you didn’t venture. He threw you out, but arguing with a deity for a second time in an hour struck you as too much of a bad idea. You hoped he didn’t see the flash of anger in your eye as you turned, shucked the sweater, and shook out the cloak.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Before you could wrap the thing around your shoulders, you felt his fingers dance up the column of your spine. Clad in nothing but the clunky black boots, you swallowed hard as he turned you and tilted your face again. He hooked a finger into your collar and hefted you up so far you pranced on your toes, toppling into him with no balance. Naked save for his ownership and boots, your body warmed, rising to even this simple demand.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So angry.” His voice slid like velvet, and you breathed gratitude that his annoyance had abated at least this bit. As your features eased and lips parted, he dipped his thumb into your mouth briefly, toying with the end of your tongue. “Better.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It took every ounce of your willpower to not pout like a child. You even bit down on your lip to keep it from subconsciously poking out. Instead, you swept your lashes down to cover the tempest of feeling swirling there and waited for whatever came next. Setting you back on flat feet, he tugged the cloak around you with deft hands and buttoned it — much the way he did the first time, as though he were wrapping you up for his own delight.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Which may very well be true.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Unlike before, he didn’t throw you through the rooms or jostle you down the corridors. Rather, he walked on ahead and expected that you would follow. You ran to keep up with him, discomfited by the echo of your boots in the hallways whereas his made no sound at all. It was always off putting because a man so large should not be so stealthy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>At the mouth of his keep, the gaping maw carved into the side of a mountain, you stopped short of crossing the threshold. You folded your arms about your middle and chewed your upper lip, even taking a step back from it. He had reacted so violently to your original request that you, smartly, found this to be a dubious decision. It would surprise no part of you that he brought you here to test you, to see just how much of an idiot you still could be. Unsettled, you glued your eyes to the ground.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His voice, subtler than before and less agitated, broke through your anxious diatribe, and he tucked his hand beneath your upper arm and squeezed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You wanted to go outside.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He tugged you through the opening and out into the ever-present twilight. At his side, you realized you held your breath. Releasing it, you stared up at him, stupefied.  You thought you should say something, but he pulled you further down the path, and you forgot what it might have been.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rather than take you back the way you’d come, back towards the spot of your enslavement, The Ren led you onto a new path, one carpeted with forest green moss and decorated by trees overrun with climbing ivy, oak, sumac, and something else you couldn’t name, though it tingled at the edge of your brain.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You hadn’t yet burst into flames, which was such a pleasing development that you allowed yourself to enjoy the scenery unfolding before you, albeit with trepidation.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Booted as you were, it wasn’t long before you ventured off of the path he leisurely strolled to investigate something hidden beneath a fallen branch or to find out what color that pretty flower was up close. He schooled you repeatedly to not touch that, be careful that one has thorns, or no you can’t taste that fruit.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was pleasant, almost amiable; and soon, softened by the surrounding nature, you babbled at him, not sure if he was listening. You told him about the time you fell into nettles because you were curious and didn’t know what they were. And then you told him about the time you nearly poisoned your entire family when you mistook white dandelions for hogweed and made tea. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Poised atop a rock, you looked upwards at winking stars and mused out loud that he must be right. Nona called you a curious child, but your mother spent many nights exasperated by your pursuits, though it was her lesson that molded you.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You grew so accustomed to the sound of your voice bouncing off of the trees that when he answered one of your queries, you froze. At some point, your wonder-filled monologue became laced with questions — most of which he ignored.  He answered this one, though, and the honeyed timbre vibrated in your bones.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s a neurotoxin.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>An entire minute passed wherein you could only blink because you’d forgotten what you asked. Your stare swiveled from him to the tree and back again; but finally, it registered. You asked him what was the sticky stuff you could see weeping from the bark.  Canting your head, you nodded at the tree as though it had given you the answer itself when, in truth, you counted your blessings you hadn’t popped a finger through what you’d thought was molasses.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On you walked, and on you babbled.  Once he answered the first question, though, the trip morphed into nothing but.  Some he scoffed at; some he answered. He told you there were no animals here because it required his brother to breathe in life. From the tone of his voice, you inferred that having Solo here was not a joyous occasion.  He created this place, he said, to pass the time between reapings, but also because Solo’s universe was too bright, too loud.  He wanted something calm, something apart.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He cultivated fatal things, he said, because they were always the most beautiful, the most interesting.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Plucking something deep purple from a bush, he held out what looked to be a small blueberry. You blanched. Everything here was deadly; he’d spent this entire walk telling you not to touch or taste anything. And though you hadn’t entirely listened to what he told you, this screamed danger. Surely, it was another test.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His bass chuckle licked at your eardrums, melting your resolve. If he told you to drink hemlock, you knew you would.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Gingerly, you opened your mouth for him to deposit the thing and, ever so slowly, chewed it, waiting for it to kill you. Instead, the berry burst, an explosion of flavor. It was sweet with just the right amount of tart. The juice lingered on your tongue, and you hopped from one foot to the other with outright glee at how damn good it tasted.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He gave you a second one, if only to prevent you from diving headfirst into the lot, and turned you around with a swat to your ass, sending you forward on the path before you could ask him why you never felt hungry here. Around the next bend lay a thicket of reeds, whistling gently in the breeze that never died away. Straying from the road yet again, you brushed your hands through the inky stalks and rubbed at the cream-colored knuckles, appreciating how something so rigid, so fixed, could bend and sway with the wind.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span> Humming softly, you closed your eyes and listened to their tune, losing track of even yourself in the angelic melody.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Pick one.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Your nose tugged up again at the idea that you’d have to taste it, but you didn’t argue. Looking around, you settled on a middling reed, neither too fat nor too thin. You could see now that they weren't black but rather a purple deeper than you'd ever seen. The hue of bruise, your subconscious offered.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Twisting the thing free from its base, you carried it back to him and offered it up. When your hand raised, he wrapped a long bit of vine around your wrist; and before you could register what happened, he lashed both arms together.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In less time than it took you to lace your boots, he had you bound face-first to a thick tree. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You wanted to stomp and cry, to demand that he tell you what this was for because you tried so hard to be good. You hadn’t even touched anything until he said you could! Except you couldn’t say that for sure. So eager were you to explore and find new things, you didn’t remember if you waited for his clearance.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Forgiveness; not permission. Except in this case, punishment.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Finally making a better choice, you kept your mouth shut and turned away. Nothing mattered here except for his will, his desires.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How many words did you disobey, little lamb? On that hilltop.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Your head whipped around, and any color left in your face drained away. Realization dawned, and your eyes suddenly ached with disappointment.  This was all a ruse, a ploy, a beautiful lie.  He used your desire to be outside, to learn and discover against you so he could bring you here to discipline you.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Worse, he made you fetch your own fucking switch for it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Air stuck in your throat, clinging to your windpipe like glue. You understood what the reed was for now, and your furtive glance saw him testing its resilience. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You knew that if you answered wrong, or if you guessed, he would likely beat you until you couldn’t stand. But if you got it right, if your answer pleased him, maybe you escaped only abused rather than obliterated. You squeezed your eyes shut tight, willing your addled brain to remember. As best you could, you replayed the events of that day, that battle, that hilltop.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Stay here, he said. Touch nothing; speak to no one. Eight words.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You lifted your gaze to his and opened your mouth to speak, the rushed answer on the tip of your tongue. But a bell chimed in your head, and you licked at your front teeth, replaying everything again. His hand came to the back of your neck, his patience running out.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ten,” you said, breathless and anxious.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ten words. Stay here. Touch nothing. Speak to no one. </span>
  <b>Stay here.</b>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He said it twice.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Satisfied, he leaned in to nudge his nose at your temple. “Good girl.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His wide hands roamed your body, shifting the cloak out of the way so your lower half was on lewd display. The cool wind whipped at your bare ass and slithered between your legs, eliciting a whimper. Caught somewhere between aroused anticipation and outright dread, you forced yourself to be still, to not twist in the bonds and beg him for a favor he surely did not possess.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The first hit came on a startling whistle. You hardly heard it before pain set fire to your backside, a sizzling stripe that radiated from the surface of your skin inwards. You yelped but kept yourself upright, though surged onto your toes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Chastising yourself for thinking he might allow you to prepare, you settled your weight back down gingerly. There was no tenderness here, no warm up, no waiting for your readiness.  This was pure sanction, penance for your nonsense.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The first. What was it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You cringed, shaking your head between your arms. You’d rather he asked you to count; but no, he wanted you to castigate yourself, to punctuate just how disobedient you’d been. Your eyes glossed over, slammed shut to keep the tide at bay. You swallowed sawdust, defeated.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Stay.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The word barely left your mouth before the second strike fell, just as shocking as the first. Clenching your teeth, you gouged craters into your palms with how hard you tried to not tremble.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Here.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Contented that you at least understood the point, that you worked out what you should say, he reached out to scratch at your fiery skin. He cupped one ass cheek, squeezing and lifting, but you only ground your jaw, rubbing your nose to stem the sniffling. His murmuring was lost to your dizziness as the next hit fell so hard your guts, your cunt, your thighs clenched.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“T-touch,” your voice was only a warble now, barely complying around a sob. The reed crashed down again, pulling a loud wail from the center of your chest. “Nothing.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You dissolved into sobs, unable to even apologize through tears and hiccups. Your backside blazed from sacrum to kneecaps. Your ass swelled and throbbed and stung. You clawed away bark and debris until your fingertips and nails were raw and ruddy, but you didn’t care. All you could think was you were only halfway through this torment, and you would not make it to the end.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Your body screamed that you should beg, supplicate, and seek forgiveness; but once today already, you fumbled through an apology. Whatever mercy there may be in The Ren, it was not for this. Not for you.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lost to your internal war, he took advantage of how little you paid attention and delivered a blow to your ass with the palm of his mighty hand. It landed with such force you screamed, knees buckling. He didn’t give you time to do your part, to speak the word, instead choosing to wind his free hand into your hair so tightly you heard some of it pull free. He drug you back onto your feet only to knock the wind out of you with another punch to the opposite cheek. You howled for him to stop, pleaded on broken sobs, but he walloped you another two times — one to each side — before letting you fall against the tree.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You shook so hard your teeth clattered. Damp from head to toes, you decided you must have lost control of your bladder because your thighs were wet, and your pussy felt loose and pliant. Although you were certain he didn’t hit you anywhere close to what he could have, you gripped your bond until your fingers bled. Thrown directly into the center of shock, any tears you had for him fled, chased away by the rush of thunder that was your erratic heartbeat.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Demanding, he snatched up your face, gouging at your jaws with his stony digits. Astonishingly, you produced what he waited for in a hoarse croak.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Speak to no one.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He spun you, shoved your back into the tree trunk, and ripped your lovely cloak to shreds. It hung in tatters, revealing your sweaty, shivering skin to his gaze, a gaze that roved each individual inch of you, taking in just how pitifully you swayed in the face of his lesson. He cupped your face and leaned in, drawing a deep breath to enjoy the scent of your fear.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What’s left, lamb?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Your eyes hurt; your lip bled. Your nose felt two sizes two big, and your voice was broken and labored. But his hand at your cheek soothed you. It was cool against your feverish flesh, steady against the tornado raging inside. He stroked your hips, fondled your breasts, pinched the welts he raised. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“S-stay h-here.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowding into you, he licked at your dry, cracked mouth and ran his fingers along your belly, down to graze at your sticky thighs. You burned with humiliation as he tutted to find dampness there, thinking you sealed your fate as his forever childling with how you managed to wet yourself when he beat you. But when he brushed his thumb along your lower lip, it wasn’t urine you tasted. It was the tang of your cunt, the tart lubrication you certainly didn’t remember producing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He basked in your confusion, your fear and pain. He reveled in the way your thighs squeezed together, the way your tongue darted out to taste where his had been. You saw it in his face, the nearly human way he devoured you with those chameleon eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When he kissed you, your head spun at the delirious taste of his mouth. You stood onto your toes to get closer to him, to kiss him again, but he buried his face into the crook of your neck, bit hard at your thumping vein, and whispered in your ear.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Try to be good this time.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And then he was gone.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You blinked hard, set atremble by the implication of his words. If you knew better, you would have wrapped your legs around his broad hips, clung to him with every ounce of your strength to beg that he not do this. If your brain worked faster, you’d have pleaded, promised him a hundred babies, a thousand years in captivity.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But none of it mattered.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He left you lashed to a tree, terrified and alone in a land of poison.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You did the only thing you could think of, the only thing that would provide even a hint of comfort.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You prayed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>May I be shelter for those who need shelter,<br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>A guide for those who seek Balance,<br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>A bridge for those who wish to cross the unknown.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>May I be a beacon in the dark,<br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>A shoulder for the weary,<br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>A balm for those who are ill.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>May I be a well of plenty, a river run deep,<br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>A sturdy plain, an unbroken path, a calm in the storm.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>May I endure heartache and sorrow,<br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>Love and devotion,<br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <em></em>
    <span>Want and need,</span><br/>

  
  <em>
    <span>That I may know our Fathers in heaven<br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <em></em>
  <span>And join them in the middle way. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Stop This</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>For hours, you kept vigil. Your terror believed you to be alone in a mundane forest, and you strained to hear a gnarly growl, an angry hiss, or even the snap of a twig to alert you of a predator’s presence.</p><p>But this was not a normal woodland, and there was only the gentle rustle of reeds and leaves in the breeze. This place was perilous but subtly so, the danger disguised as beauty.</p><p>You drowned in worry, chewing your cheeks and lips as you waited for him to return or to appear from between the trees where he hovered, watching you struggle. He would, you nodded to no one.  Surely, even he wouldn’t leave you alone in peril. You told yourself this over and over, demanding that your heart make your brain believe it. Surely, offering your body and potentially pregnant already made you worth something.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks to everyone following along with this story. It is unfolding in a very unique way that I did not expect. I appreciate you all. &lt;3</p><p>Content Note: Menstruation &amp; red mustache, suicidal ideation, talk of pregnancy</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For hours, you kept vigil. Your terror believed you to be alone in a mundane forest, and you strained to hear a gnarly growl, an angry hiss, or even the snap of a twig to alert you of a predator’s presence.</p><p>But this was not a normal woodland, and there was only the gentle rustle of reeds and leaves in the breeze. This place was perilous but subtly so, the danger disguised as beauty.</p><p>You drowned in worry, chewing your cheeks and lips as you waited for him to return or to appear from between the trees where he hovered, watching you struggle. He would, you nodded to no one.  Surely, even he wouldn’t leave you alone in peril. You told yourself this over and over, demanding that your heart make your brain believe it. Surely, offering your body and potentially pregnant already made you worth something.  </p><p>But the nagging doubt never receded. His compassion, if he truly had it, was warped by solitude and eons of ends. You knew he would kill a thing to end its suffering rather than lend it aid.</p><p>Huddled in on yourself as best you could in your bondage, you kept the tears at bay until fatigue won out over fortitude. Limp, aching, wrecked, you contemplated screaming the way you did the first day. It drew his attention, after all. Instead, you cried as quietly as you could. He did not come, would not come; this was your punishment.</p><p>When your mind could no longer resist, you succumbed to fitful sleep, hounded by dreams of his terrible helmet and angry face. Repeatedly, you jerked awake from his haunting shouts only to still be hanging from the damn tree. How long would he make you endure this?</p><p>Shivering and miserable, you barely noticed the bright light emerging to your left. Larger and stronger, hotter and hotter, it grew, catching your eye and sending both wide open. You blinked hard to be sure you were awake, that you weren’t imagining it, but on it grew to the size of a man. The sort of man you’d seen only once before in your life.</p><p>The sort of man who wasn’t a man at all.</p><p>Even if you were half-dreaming, or half-mad, there was no mistaking who it was. There was only the unanswerable question of what he wanted. </p><p>On a wince, you turned away when he stepped from the center of that dazzling aura. You didn’t want to look. Although you instinctively knew that if The Ren was real, so too must be his brother, you didn’t want to see it.  You didn’t need more evidence that the decision you made to journey here was ludicrous.</p><p>Unphased by your flinch, his ethereal fingers skimmed your chin, and his overly warm hand cupped your cheek. The near tenderness of it made you want to wretch. It was too much. He was too close. The Ren was cool to the touch, calming and, somehow, tranquil. This creature burned too brightly. You felt singed by his very touch, and you didn’t want even a second more of it.  There was only one way to make him stop, though.</p><p>Begrudgingly, you looked up into such familiar eyes; but whereas you knew irises that flitted from color to color, these shone a brilliant gold, piercing and fixed. They traveled the length of your body, and you could do nothing but endure his assessing eyes upon your nudity.</p><p>“Stop this.”</p><p>His voice radiated through you, flipping your stomach. It startled your heart out of rhythm, forcing a choking wheeze from your straining ribs. It was a punch to the gut, a sameness that was just slightly off. He spoke with a voice you knew, but it teemed with something unnameable, something you felt in your bones.  It was wrong, as though he worked to make sure you knew who and what he was with his voice.</p><p>Abruptly, the light bulb blinked on. This was pure demand disguised as niceness.  The Galaxy belonged to him, and he was very accustomed to getting his way.</p><p>“You do not know what you do.” He pinched your chin and forced your face nearer to his glowing gaze. “Stop this before you do greater damage.”</p><p>His touch turned fiery, angrily so. It was a threat, intended to punctuate your mortality with the slightest, most insignificant gesture. Fear knocked your knees, but you set your jaw against the blossoming burn and jerked away from his fingers.</p><p>The calm shroud evaporated, replaced by annoyance.  It was a look you knew well; but this time, you didn’t shy away from it. His hand tightened to a fist, and he towered over you, leaning in menacingly. You perched on the verge of saying something monumentally stupid when he glanced over your shoulder toward the mossy path, clocking something you couldn’t see. One last stern look to you was all there was before he disappeared, sucking all the heat and then some from the little nook as he went. </p><p>Your trembling turned to quaking, a mixture of cresting adrenaline, fear, and what now felt like arctic cold. Your entire body shook terribly, unable to find any equilibrium in the wake of cold warring with hot.</p><p>Your particular deity came into view, and you slumped against the tree, ready to beg that he take you from here. You wondered how you must look, terrified and wild-eyed with your teeth chattering, chest and abdomen heaving, and fingers scrabbling against the ties at your wrists.</p><p>All of which he completely ignored.</p><p>The contented noise he made as he lifted you into granite arms and curled your legs around his waist jolted through you. Relief flooded in at the feel of him against you, and you let loose a pitiful whinge and pulled at the ties.  All you wanted to do was curl into his broad chest, regardless of how childish it would feel. </p><p>Having his own agenda, cool fingers grazed your labia, plucking at the meat before sliding further down to assess your readiness. The realization that he meant to have you here, in the open, struck a chord you couldn’t put your finger on. But if you kept secret what just happened, the penance for it could very well be another night on this tree.</p><p>You twisted in his arms and shook your head to get it on straight, but he only tucked his face into the crook of your neck to lick at your sweat-slicked skin. He mistook your attempt at gathering your wits as reluctance and bit at your jaw. He clawed at your backside to keep you still, and you hissed at the drag of his nails.</p><p>“Did you think it would be only once, lamb?”  He shifted you in his embrace, scraping your back against the rigid bark. His next words came against the corner of your mouth, a husky promise that set your insides to clenching. “You’ll sacrifice this pretty cunt to me over and over.”</p><p>“N-n-n...” Freezing, feverish, and foolish, you couldn’t control your tongue. Pushing a knee up under his arm, you squirmed and thrashed until you thought he might slap you. “S-s-s-solo.”</p><p>The Galaxy stopped.</p><p>The Ren’s normally disinterested features morphed into murderous, and his fingers gouged into the soft swell of your hips. He stared at you, seething, and your very soul shrank from him. Cowering, waiting for the strike, you turned your face away, squeezed your eyes shut tight, and braced for the explosion of his anger.</p><p>What was a calm breeze whipped up into tumultuous wind. The silver twilight sky darkened with thick, gray, thunderous clouds. Plants and flowers and trees curled away from their creator, burrowing down as though to survive his wrath. Stars that hearkened to his every whim blinked out, casting the land into midnight blackness. </p><p>Whatever fear Solo produced in you vanished in the face of this. You knew what The Ren was capable of, what he could accomplish with nothing more than his mood. </p><p>You clung to him, knees tight around his middle, ankles hooked at the small of his back. He was the eye of the storm, the only bit of steadiness in this now abysmal environment. His eyes flashed lightning bright, swirling ominous shades of crimson and smoke. Suddenly, his wide hand snatched up your face, turning it right and left. You knew the skin flushed and heated from Solo’s touch, but could he see it somehow? Did the man beget of light leave a mark on your flesh?</p><p>Enraged, he shoved you away, letting his wolfish stare rake over the rest of you. You balked, shifting uncomfortably as he gripped your outer thigh and turned you to one side. Tangling fingers in your hair, he yanked your head back to inspect the jagged neckband for signs of tampering. It was then you understood he was looking for evidence that his brother sullied you, coerced you away from his claim.</p><p>You were naked, disheveled, and visibly struggling with all that transpired; and no doubt, the majority of anyone he’d ever known found Solo to be the more appealing brother.</p><p>“I-I-I didn’t.” You stood onto your toes and tried to lean into him, as though you could calm the brute with your nearness. “N-nothing happened. He said go away; that’s all. I-I swear.”</p><p>Hoping to placate him with that information, you shrieked as it only launched him into a roar that cracked the very ground you stood upon. From nowhere, his arcane scythe flew into his hand; and when the saber ignited, every vein in every leaf of every tree electrified to match until all the land was aglow in a scarlet-infused fog.</p><p>“Please,” you begged, haggard and croaking. “It was nothing. I didn’t do this.”</p><p>Rattled to the root of your spine, you were a breath away from apologizing for your very existence when the arc of his weapon came for you. It was so fast you didn’t have time to scream. In a blink, you knew Solo turned his brother from you, made him see this was senseless and that you couldn’t do what you’d promised.</p><p>Your time as a stupid girl was at an end.</p><p>It wasn’t until you felt Ren’s inflexible grip around your upper arm that you recognized you weren’t dead. He hauled you onto your feet and threw you at the path from which you’d come yesterday. Disoriented and ungraceful, you tripped and clattered to the ground in a mess of shredded cloak, boots, and knotted hair. </p><p>“Go back.” He hefted you from the ground and tossed you further down the minor road. “For once in your idiot life, do as you’re told. Do not leave Hosnia. Am I understood?”</p><p>His voice was unlike anything you’d heard before. Even from him. It was sonorous on a cosmic scale, and it shook loose a mudslide behind him, substantial chunks of mountain crashing to the ground. The outright malice weighting every word made your eyes ache, your lungs tighten.</p><p>Before he could shout at you again or bury you beneath the rubble, you ran.</p><p>He was gone a week before you strayed further than his bedroom and the bath. You kept to the outside, deciding it wouldn’t do to have him find you snooping through his things. Again. You roamed winding paths and explored small caves in what he called Hosnia.  You also investigated the lasting effects of Solo’s presence. Large footprints left a scorched path on the ground. The bark around where you hung was charred, and many of the bushes in the vicinity were fried down to stems. Nothing here was meant to withstand so much light, such intensity.</p><p>With the absence of The Ren’s bombastic anger, everything settled back into calm, though the stars didn’t shine as brightly, and the flora didn’t bloom as vibrantly. Everything he created seemed to miss him terribly. You didn’t let yourself fear he wouldn’t return until you admitted you missed him, too.</p><p>Hugging yourself, you trained your eyes upon the red clay footpath and wandered aimlessly for what felt to be an entire day. At the Demarcation, you found his small band of soldiers patrolling. The sight of them jarred you because wherever he’d gone, he went alone. And he left his cadre of ghouls to keep you here, to contain you.</p><p>The thought was unsettling. </p><p>When you came upon the pulverized altar, the exact spot of your tethering, you lost all control. Sunk down in the very center of it, you howled strained, lonely, wrenching sobs. He left you here. He left, and he wasn’t coming back. He might be dead, and he left you here to rot, an abandoned, foolish child in the middle of a cruel, deadly world.</p><p>You didn’t go outside after that.</p><p>You wept for days, even as you tried to force yourself to function, to pass for some kind of alive. You wandered room after room, which only fueled your heartbreak because you found that he collected artifacts from all throughout the Galaxy. Some rooms were expertly furnished, decorated to bear the theme of what you thought of as the objects’ homeworld. Some were haphazard and chaotic, the contents thrown inside and forgotten. These made you cry the hardest because you felt just like those rugs, those tatters. </p><p>Useless. Forgotten.</p><p>At the end of the second week, your menses came, and you fractured all over again. Collapsed against a wall in the throne room, you unraveled into choking, heaving, mournful sounds you didn’t know yourself capable of making. No Ren. No family. No child to potentially keep you company, to give you purpose. The physical ache of your insides was pale in comparison.</p><p>You were utterly alone.</p><p>And you could not die. Not without The Ren to release you.</p><p>There was no escaping this hell, this monotonous existence wrought with only bottomless desolation. This was the sum and scope of your world now. You would be a wailing wraith disrupting the perfect silence with your lunacy.</p><p>“Find me in the Balance, beloved.”</p><p>The voice you had been desperate to hear for months broke through your delirium, stunning you to stillness. It was as clear as if she sat beside you, and you looked around frantically. You called for her, shouting when you received no answer. In the astounding silence, you pleaded. You begged her to save you, begged the universe to let you join her. Pressing your forehead against the icy wall, you willed yourself to expire. </p><p>“Just die. Please, just let me die,” you murmured over and over.</p><p>As though to answer your plea, the barrier against which you rested shimmered to life with diaphanous color. It drew your head up, meeting your despair with the faces of your family. On a shocked cry, you rocked backwards, away from the thing; but as soon as your touch disconnected, it returned to a lifeless, muted slab.</p><p>Inching forward, you warily, carefully, pressed your fingertips to the surface; and again, the faces of your family parted the gloomy veil and blossomed into a lovely gossamer picture. Through tears turned grateful, you watched the memory play out. It was summer, and you’d all gone for a picnic. You and your brother picked as many wildflowers as you could find to decorate the small shrine Nona brought to bless the outing.</p><p>One memory tumbled into the next, silhouettes shifting as though in a delicate waltz.  Three vignettes was all it took for you to understand that he watched people’s memories this way, and you could watch yours so long as you touched it.</p><p>Shot up onto your feet, you ran through the rooms and collected every pillow and blanket you could find. You tore sheets and blankets from one bed after another and dragged over rugs to soften the hard floor.</p><p>If this was your new eternity, you would spend it with them the only way you could.</p><p>This was how he found you, buried in a nest of your own design, bundled up in another stolen shirt, and asleep with your knuckles pressed against the seam where wall met floor. </p><p>The scrape of his teeth roused you. He bit and licked and sucked at the ruddy stains on your inner thighs, drawing you from your dreams with each nip. A breathy, satisfied sigh slipped loose; and in your sleepy fog, you reached down to curl your fingers into his silken tresses.</p><p>The next purr you heard was decidedly not your own, and you slammed into awareness just as he buried his face in your pussy. On an alarmed squeak, you tried to inch away, to twist out of his grasp, but he dug his fingers and nails into your back so deep all you could do was whine.</p><p>His wicked tongue plundered through the folds and crevices of your sex before delving down and into the very proof of your failure.</p><p>Fat tears collected at the corners of your eyes because if anything you'd done here was worthy of punishment, of being cast out, it was this. This inability to live up to your word. </p><p>When he tipped your hips and parted your thighs wider, opening you up for him further, you forgot to feel sorry for yourself. Then, he bit and tugged on your labia and sucked on your over-sensitive clit, making you forget how to even inhale. </p><p>This was vulgar in its most base form, and you groaned aloud at how fucking pleased he seemed to be. He hummed and growled. Each obscene squish earned you a new murmur and tempted you to sink further into this sin with him. </p><p>You writhed and moaned, trying to coax him into just the right spot without words. But he set his sights on a new target and crawled up your body, stalking you even though you'd already been caught.</p><p>He nudged your legs apart wide with his hips and pushed his cock into your gory entrance easily. A quick rock of his hips had you pinned, penetrated, and gasping for air. </p><p>He bottomed out on an exquisite moan, and you finally let yourself look. You knew your eyes went wide, knew your mouth fell open in shock. His perfect features were not only painted in your blood, they were accented by a large scar running from forehead to clavicle.</p><p>Your mind swam with a million questions, but there was nothing to say. You'd been claimed by a barbarian, the battle king come to take what was his.</p><p>Your cunt gushed a red river, lubricating the way for him, and he slowly, languidly fucked you open, giving you long, measured passes until your body accepted him eagerly. You thought you might combust because he was here. He was inside of you, and you weren’t alone. The patient tempo of his hips increased, stunting your lungs and lifting you into an arch. You struggled and panted at the end of a particularly deep, delicious thrust, whimpering at the staggering fullness you felt. Of body. Of spirit.</p><p>You desperately wanted to hear his voice, for him to praise you or call you a dumb girl, but he said nothing, giving you only a raspy chorus of grunts. Matching him, you bit at your lips, both upper and lower, to keep from moaning; but when he shifted to kneel between your thighs, you lost the fight for silence.</p><p>Whether it was the sight of your blood or your overwhelmed hiccups, something spurred him into a harsh pace; and soon, the sound of his body slapping against yours countered your shrieks and cries. He dug one hand into your abdomen painfully, gouging at your flesh with unkind fingers to hold you in place so he could pound at you forcefully. With the other, he scooped your blood from around his relentless cock to paint your thighs, your belly, your ribs with it.</p><p>Bringing you down to the level of savage, too.</p><p>Pungent iron and tang perfumed the air; and when he bent over you to lick and bite at a stain he’d just made, you curled upwards to meet him. You gaped as he lifted his gaze to meet yours, lost to the swirl of want and demand. Holding his stare only made him fuck you harder, but you held it, fighting through the tremors and ribbons of ecstasy threatening to throw you off course.</p><p>His eyes shone nearly entirely black with only the faintest swirl at the edges of his irises, as though he’d descended into absolute madness and still fought his way back. His cheeks and nose blushed ever so faintly, and his plump pink lips pressed into a hard line as he concentrated on what you assumed was not pulverizing you. Carmine swooshes of your blood decorated his mouth, jaw, and chin, casting him as every bit the fearsome monster many believed him to be.</p><p>And though he wracked your body, all you could think was that he was magnificent.</p><p>“There go I to meet him,” you whispered, unaware you even began the war prayer. “Bone-breaker, world killer, Prince of the Void.”</p><p>He snarled and wrapped his hands around your rib cage, pressing in viciously, but he did not stop you. You left your body, suspended in the grip of death more now than ever before; but still, you prayed to him, and he allowed it.  </p><p>“There go I to find him, to tell him my sorrows, all my joys and pains.”</p><p>A ravenous growl dripped from his beautiful lips, and you, adrift in this lewd mass, traced the fresh scar upon his face with the gentlest of touches. As he drilled you nearer to mindless, you struggled to maintain his stare and pay attention as the inky chasms filled in with the vibrancy you remembered.</p><p>“Finish it.” </p><p>He groused behind gnashing teeth, lifting your hips entirely off the ground to make himself a better angle. You clung to his neck, yelping in alarm, but he held you effortlessly, keeping your cunt right where he wanted it.</p><p>“There… go… I…” </p><p>You quaked under the sheer demand of his thrusts. Nothing like last time, he threw himself into you, stabbing at your pussy so furiously you thought you could feel the fat head of his cock shoving the words up and out of your throat. He was going to kill you; you decided. Screaming at the end of his dick, just like all the others.</p><p>“Think you're a warrior now, hm?” </p><p>He snaked both arms along your back and lifted you against him. Settling back on his haunches, he wound your arms about his neck. He mouthed at your jaw, your lips, your pulse. And though he held you like you were nothing, this new position sent your weight down onto his thick cock, which earned you a sinful sound you knew you’d pray for again. </p><p>“Finish it.”</p><p>Finding his rhythm in this new configuration took seconds, and he crashed up into your cunt brutally. Even the sensuous way he breathed, deep in his broad chest and punctuated with a bit-back groan, melted away your heartache and emboldened you. Pressing your forehead to his, you curved your hand along his scalp, carding through the lustrous strands. You poured every bit of feeling, of concentration and outright need to be pleasing into this moment. You steeled your voice against any hint of wobble or breakage.</p><p>“There go I to beg him,” You nudged his nose with yours the way you had the first day when you offered your body to him.  “Maker of mercy, keeper of the balance.” You swept your lips across his, feather soft and hesitant. “Carry me home.”</p><p>As you finished, he gripped your ass tight, sheathed his cock in your heat to the hilt, and captured your mouth on a fierce kiss. Hard hips bucked, pumping you full of his seed, taking back what he thought his brother spoiled. Awestruck, you watched the orgasm roll across his face. It started as a grimace and locked jaw and ended as flared nostrils, rolling lips, and the bob of his throat when he swallowed. </p><p>Leaning forward, he eased you to the blanketed floor and settled himself against you, still wedged between your thighs and stretching your cunt to its limit. He sucked a mark into your skin just below your ear and licked at the skin just above his collar. You silently begged that the hum vibrating against your chest never stop and mewled when he shifted his knee further up to keep you open indecently.</p><p>His hips rocked into yours again, signaling he was not yet through with you, and you blew out a ragged breath. His hands pinched and palmed and skimmed all while his dick dragged out nearly completely only to push back in tantalizingly slow. You felt a new dollop of warm and sticky pour from you each time he did it, but you couldn’t tell if it was blood, arousal, or a mixture of both.</p><p>His honey-smooth voice, when it next came, rolled through you and made you dizzy. As he’d done so many times before, he slid his thumb, and that erotic drug, along your tongue, shooting you so high into the heavens you could only stare, bewildered and lost to the ravages of his desire.</p><p>“This is the last time you’ll bleed, little lamb.” </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. One Question</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Clarity broke over you swiftly, and you yelled, howled at him that you were here, but your wailing died away in gusts of wind so powerful you could barely remain upright. You waved your arms and jumped to get his attention., but it was futile. If you ran from here, you’d lose your vantage point; and then, you wouldn’t know what happened. Rooted to the ground, you watched in horror.</p>
<p>There was a hanging moment of absolute silence as they took aim along a dueling line. Your ears rang, and your head pounded. It was an absence you knew, the aftermath of a bomb, but one that hadn’t yet become. Your red eyes, shot through with terror, widened as the Galaxy’s idols launched themselves at one another.  You crouched down, clamped shaking hands over your ears, and watched it unfold.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>C/N: talk of pregnancy, dub-con/hypnosis<br/>Special thanks to @badtour for their allowing me to use an idea they had about how God Kylo looks. :)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em> Sunlight slithered over your legs and belly, warming you. The gentle grass you lay upon, the balmy air around you turned the world into a snug blanket. You crept back from somnolence, pushed into dreams by the nighttime chill and drawn from them by this streaming light. You stretched, arms overhead and arched up like a feline.  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> You wiggled your fingers into soft blue-green grass and looked out over a vista as perfect as you’d ever seen. This was the sort of place Nona called holy, a church carved out of the planet-side to remind people of their place in the Galaxy. You could bring her here. She would find the highest peak, kneel upon the hallowed ground, and lift her arms to the sky in prayer. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> Wind chimed quietly. Leaves danced. Flowers perfumed the air. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> Blissful. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> Abruptly, black lightning fractured the perfect cerulean sky; and behind it, a swarm of charcoal clouds strangled the formerly tranquil horizon and blotted out the sun. A boulder lodged in your belly, the core of your being knowing something was very, very wrong. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> Despite all logic, you leapt to your feet and ran towards the disturbance, using the fearsome flashes as your compass.  That is where the event touched down, and that is where you needed to go. You darted through whipping branches. Plush sod gave way to jagged rocks. Docile and lovely became haggard and harsh. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> You came upon the cliff so abruptly you skidded to a stop and crashed to the ground in the attempt to not vault over its side. From your high perch, you saw them and gaped at the absolute madness. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> Glowing streaks of red and blue clashed thunderously, sending violet arcs erupting upwards to be swallowed by the falling ash and debris. In a deliberate, deadly dance, one angelic, angular face chased his mirror image. Blinking hard, your mind whirred. You knew why they were here, why they were angry, but you couldn’t remember it. They shouted and raged, punched and swung their vicious blades at one another without ever gaining the advantage. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> Perfectly matched, they spun together in destructive harmony. It was an eerie… </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> Balance. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> Clarity broke over you swiftly, and you yelled, howled at him that you were here, but your wailing died away in gusts of wind so powerful you could barely remain upright. You waved your arms and jumped to get his attention., but it was futile. If you ran from here, you’d lose your vantage point; and then, you wouldn’t know what happened. Rooted to the ground, you watched in horror. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> There was a hanging moment of absolute silence as they took aim along a dueling line. Your ears rang, and your head pounded. It was an absence you knew, the aftermath of a bomb, but one that hadn’t yet become. Your red eyes, shot through with terror, widened as the Galaxy’s idols launched themselves at one another.  You crouched down, clamped shaking hands over your ears, and watched it unfold. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> They were the bomb, and their fierce clash exploded outwards with enough energy to blast the mountain, and its cliff, apart. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> You flew backwards, slammed into a falling tree by an unstoppable force. It tore asunder massive trunks and blasted through rock faces as old as they. It sent earthquakes to shake the foundation of the world and ripped a gash in the planet that plummeted straight to its core. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> It loosed a gargantuan mountain slide careening straight at that molten tomb, with you trapped in it. You clawed at roots and dirt, desperate to find something solid, but there was no escaping the monstrous maw. It sucked everything around you in, leaving you only able to scream. </em>
</p>
<p>You jolted awake on a panicked shout.</p>
<p>Petrified, wild eyes darted left, right, and center until your brain registered the details of where you were versus where it believed you to be. Not outside. Inside. Not a mountain. Throne room. Not disappearing into a volcano. Hosnia. You curled fingers into the velvet fur you’d slept upon for days, using it to ground yourself.</p>
<p>You could still smell the char and the mud. Your eyes stung from the debris hanging in the air in the wake of a decimated sky. Your throat scratched and complained, tired from all the screaming.</p>
<p>A touch at your back shot another yell from your dry mouth, but the fingers that delivered it wrapped around your wrist, tugging you from your rigidity. You didn’t want to look, uncertain if this was still part of the dream, but you dared a glance over your shoulder and exhaled, relieved.</p>
<p>He lay with one long arm tucked beneath his head, bare chested and haphazardly covered by a silken blanket. His raven hair tousled in a way you didn’t get to see often, and it lent him an almost leisurely look. It was hard to be sure, but he looked... relaxed.</p>
<p>You couldn’t move, not even to bend back to him the way he wanted, and an entertained smirk danced upon his plump, nearly pink lips. Shifting, he found a sensitive spot between your ribs, one he enjoyed thoroughly, and pressed his mouth there, murmuring something against the skin that you couldn’t make out.</p>
<p>He’d kept you on this floor for days, destroying your nest, and you, again and again. He said your recent menses would be your last, and he seemed determined to scoop its very last remnants from inside you. He worked you with his fingers, his tongue, his always ready cock, and you knew to your bones it would be like this until his seed took hold.</p>
<p>He always disliked it when you didn’t respond, and both of his powerful arms circled around your middle and pulled you into his lap. He tucked your knees to either side of his hips and molded you to his marble torso. You tried to pull away, the burn in your hips uncomfortable.  You were also too aware of the dried blood, filth, and sweat that stained you, but he cinched hard around you until you sat still.</p>
<p>You ached from hair to toes. He’d used you so thoroughly your entire body was heavy, and you folded dead arms against him and pressed your forehead to his sculpted shoulder.</p>
<p>“Where did you go?”</p>
<p>Your voice was small, unsure. He’d silenced each attempt you’d made to ask him about his time away with a tongue down your throat or a fucking so rough you could do little but hiccup and shout. His fingers dug into your spine, eliciting a wince, but you waited quietly, hoping that maybe this time would be different.</p>
<p>When nothing came, you tried again. You could be dissatisfied with his lack of response, too.</p>
<p>“Did you go to see Solo?”</p>
<p>His pectorals tightened, and you lifted your head. His beautiful mouth pressed into a firm line of what you knew to be annoyance, but his bodily reaction was, itself, an answer. You searched his turbulent eyes before following the trail of his scar down from his forehead.</p>
<p>“Is he…like you? Real?” You swallowed, uncertain of what you even wanted to ask. “Did you kill him?”</p>
<p>He still didn’t answer, but he also didn’t cast you off, leading you to wonder if you hadn’t asked the right question yet. Hesitantly, you brushed your fingertips along the scar’s tail, unexpectedly understanding what made it. You might have dreamed it, but you knew Solo carried a weapon counter to The Ren’s blood red blade. And it was blue.</p>
<p>“You killed him, didn’t you?” You wondered, for a split second, how one went about killing a god; but in all the universe, he was the only one capable of doing so.  Having seen the expressions of his anger, you believed him willing to do it, too. “What happens to the universe now? Won’t that upset the Balance?”</p>
<p>It was one question too many.</p>
<p>Grasping your upper arms painfully, he unceremoniously cast you off of his lap and onto the floor. On autopilot, you scrambled away, putting a scant amount of space between yourself and his ire. He had no compunction about hurting you, punishing you, and he leveled you with such a look your insides withered.</p>
<p>That’s when you noticed it.</p>
<p>At the edges, he tapered into wisps of nothing; but it was so odd a thing, you couldn’t be sure you saw it correctly. Furrowing your brow, you focused on the sculpt of his calf. You watched the reality of him, the absoluteness of his body, flicker as though he was little more than a tangible spectre. </p>
<p>“What did he do to you? What…” You inched forward, eyes fixed upon his clenched fist and the way it appeared to ripple in and out of existence. “Did you do that to him?”</p>
<p>“Enough!”</p>
<p>The cosmic boom in his voice shoved you back, had you shrinking away from him. As you always did. You never could leave well enough alone. He turned on you so quick you fumbled, your escape hampered by the pile of blankets and sheets you used to make your nest.</p>
<p>“Traitor.” He snatched you up by his jagged collar, dangling you in the air like a rag doll. “One touch has you so eager for his bed? Think if you ask for him enough, he’ll come for you? Hm?”</p>
<p>He threw you so hard, you smashed into the wall across the room and slumped to the floor in a broken heap. Fat tears collected at the corners of your eyes, but you fought to keep them from spilling. Your tongue grew thick with each heavy breath expelled through trembling lips.</p>
<p>“Did you spend these days pretending I was him? That you would bear the Light Bringer’s child instead of a bastard darkling?”</p>
<p>“No!” You quaked, feeling the icy tendrils of disappointment dampen your very soul. “I’m just trying…” </p>
<p>You shook your head in defeat and let the rest of the thought drop away. It didn’t matter. He would never think of you as more than a petulant human who would never live up to his expectation.</p>
<p>“You’re weak.” He spat on the floor at your feet, making his disgust painfully clear. “An idiot girl trying to know eternity at the end of a god’s dick. Go, then. See if you can find Solo; see if you find what you want to know in his bed.”</p>
<p>The way he spoke to you, the way he all but called you a whore, enkindled courage in your gut. You lifted a new gaze to him, one born of defiance and a will you’d forgotten you had. Having spent so long mired in loss and pain and fear, you felt as though you didn’t remember this person, this strength you used to have. Biting down on your lip hard enough to leave teeth marks, you looked at the black marble floor.</p>
<p>“I’m trying,” you gritted the words out, pushing up to your knees, “To know YOU.”</p>
<p>You got to your feet but shrieked in pain and collapsed. Your feet stung, and you found scores of lacerations marking the tender flesh. You’d been so wrapped up you’d assumed the soreness and aching was from him, from the way he hardly let you sleep these last few days.</p>
<p>But you found bruises that even his insistent fingers could not have made. Mingled in with the discoloration at your sides, there were fresh, deep gouge marks as though you’d been dragged through hell. Your fingertips were raw and blistered, and your backside was too tender to sit upon even a moment longer.</p>
<p>He, too, seemed to just notice your pathetic state and stepped closer as you pushed to your feet again. Steeling yourself against the discomfort, against the splintering shooting up your bones, you glowered at him, half snarling.</p>
<p>“Get away from me.” You bristled and took a step back, then another, and another. It was little more than a hobble, but you remained upright. A victory. “Gods! All I’ve been trying to do is know you. Because you’re it, aren’t you?” You ignored his derisive huff and balled your hands into fists, matching the way his always tightened when you were around. “You’re the only other person in this whole damn land, and I go out of my mind when you’re not here.”</p>
<p>His face changed; it was barely perceptible, the infinitesimal tempering of his clenched jaw, but you’d seen his irritation enough to spot the difference. You snorted; too little too late. Emboldened, you took yet another step back with a determination you now had that you didn’t before.</p>
<p>“But fine. I will be your idiot girl, your foolish infant that you don’t have to talk to. I will fulfill my end of our deal, and I will bear your rotten child. But you…” You practically vibrated, filled to the brim with some kind of meanness and upheaval that edged dangerously close to heartbreak. “You stay the hell away from me otherwise.”</p>
<p>Before you could lose your nerve, you turned and fled.</p>
<p>You knew you wanted to run, but you didn’t know where you were going. You had no clear destination in mind, but you needed to get away from his spitefulness and inability to feel anything other than malice. With each foot you put between you and him, though, your spirit sunk more and more. It was as though running from him sapped you of all strength, of life, and it made you angry.</p>
<p>You felt more tied to him now than ever before. He hadn’t simply enslaved you with this sacrilegious neck piece; he’d bound you to him by blood, by spit and seed. You were utterly his prisoner.</p>
<p>Exhausted, miserable, and injured, you ducked into one of the many rooms and leaned against the wall for stability. The gentle lap of water against stone drew your gaze, and you nearly whispered a prayer of thanks. It was his bath, his enchanted water that would somehow heal your wounds. You idly wondered if it would also heal your womb from whatever damage his cursed spend would cause.</p>
<p>All you had to do was make it there.</p>
<p>You shoved your fists into bloodshot eyes to staunch the tears and shuffled towards the oversized basin in the floor on wobbly legs. Everything hurt; even your teeth throbbed. You’d known some variation of discomfort every day of your time here, be it cold, ripped cunt, split lips, aching joints, inch-long thorns. The results of a landslide, however, made those moments but fuzzy memories.</p>
<p>At the ledge, you skittishly dipped your toes into the water until they scraped the first step. You eased your weight onto that foot and lowered in the other to share the load. A relieved sigh worked its way through you. Overcome at the slight measure of solace, you practically curled into it. Your shoulders dropped, the apprehension beginning to drain away. </p>
<p>The bath truly was a miraculous thing. It anticipated your needs and wants and changed itself to suit. Sometimes, it was shallow throughout so you could sit and hug your knees. Other times, it sloped to a deeper end to allow you to wade out and tread water. On certain occasions, like today, there was no bottom. It was an inky abyss, placid yet slick as oil.</p>
<p>Bit by bit, you lowered yourself into the palliative pond, letting it envelop you and draw you down into its depths. Laden with weariness and sorrow, you sunk below the surface, suspended in this womb that kneaded your limbs and swaddled you tight to ease your discomfort. You succumbed to the way the water vacillated between comfortingly warm and invigoratingly cold.</p>
<p>Closing your eyes, you pictured the wounds at your arm and thigh also healing, imagining that you would drown without his spell. In a dark recess of your heart, you wished for it, welcomed it. But that release did not come.</p>
<p>Sullen, but healed, you broke the surface and moved to the bathtub’s side. Your feelings dulled, and you folded your arms on the damp floor and laid your head in that cradle, sniffling and working to calm your anxiety.</p>
<p>Too soon, the quiet shattered, stolen by the very first thief of night.</p>
<p>You felt him enter the room. An inkling flitted across your mind, and you decided it was an apt description. He moved as silent as the grave, plaguing these halls without so much as a soft thud for a footstep. His presence, his infection of a room, was undeniable. He stole what little ambient warmth there was and replaced it with intensity, this ever-present undertone of desire and demand.</p>
<p>The air crackled around him. You thought if you were quiet enough, still enough, you could hear the molecules popping.</p>
<p>It was the definition of his existence. He took things you knew and turned them inside out. He wasn’t emotional himself; he roused you to feeling for him by ramping up your heartbeat. He wasn’t calm, despite his so-often flat affect. His inner turmoil always roiled beneath the surface, like bees trapped under a gauzy curtain, but he soothed you with his solidity. </p>
<p>He was unbreakable; and as long as he kept you around, you couldn’t break either. He wouldn’t allow it.</p>
<p>He stepped in, disrupting the water’s serenity with his mass. The structure reacted to him more than you, and you felt the tub subtly oscillate as it changed for him. It was of little consequence, though. Even if it created a floor for him to walk on, you still wouldn’t reach it. So gone were you to frayed nerves and scorn, you didn’t even budge.</p>
<p>“Come here.”</p>
<p>His fingers skimmed your spine, a gentle gesture meant to placate you and draw you out of your cocoon. When you didn’t move, he stepped behind you, barely grazing your skin with his, and placed both hands on the ledge on either side of you. He was overwhelming, and your heart skipped into an uneven tempo even as you stubbornly fought to stay angry.</p>
<p>
  <em> Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look. </em>
</p>
<p>“Turn around, little lamb.” His voice softened, deepened, now that he was closer to your ear. Stoic, you turned your face away, giving him nothing but the back of your head. “Please.”</p>
<p>The word was electric, igniting something inside you’d forgotten about. Your pupils dilated with yearning, blowing black as his hypnosis returned to haunt you.</p>
<p>It was wicked and cruel and thoroughly effective. He didn't need to hurt you; he only needed to speak.</p>
<p>Your ribs seized, unable to make room for the shocked gasp that dropped open your mouth. Your skin sizzled, and your pussy convulsed. You salivated, your tongue readying your throat to receive him. Seeking some kind of relief, you crushed suddenly swollen and aching breasts against the cool tile. Your hips twisted, thighs squeezing together to quell the quiver. His hand on your hip had you whimpering. Unable to stop, you rubbed your ass back against him when he dipped his mouth into the curve of your neck.</p>
<p>His long arm slid around you, palm rubbing a claiming trail down from your hip directly between your legs. He cupped your sex and used it as leverage to pull you against him even more. You wanted him to fill you, to spread and break you apart now that you’d healed, but you ground your jaws together and kept your eyes closed. Pleading with him, admitting defeat, wasn’t something you were prepared to do.</p>
<p>That’s exactly what he wanted. </p>
<p>He whispered it a second time, and the word slammed against your brain, battering your willpower. He wanted you mindless and panting, begging to be filled. You remembered the way he looked when he first said it. The outright debauched gleam in his shining eyes, the lewd way he licked his lips as you contorted beneath him, every immaculate detail etched into an indecent painting you’d pay homage to forever, even if he despised you. </p>
<p>Undeterred, he nipped at your neck and pushed his hard length between your buttocks and slippery labia to nudge at your tingling clit. He used his fingers as a barrier, keeping his dick firmly wedged in your mess. You were rapidly losing your wits and mewled childishly when he withdrew unhurriedly and rocked forward again so slowly you wanted to curse.</p>
<p>It was a matter of time before you gave him what he wanted. You’d give up your very sanity if it meant he kept touching you this way. The way he nibbled along the craggy circumference of his collar, the possessive grip he kept on your cunt, the relentless, steady pace he set — All of it drove you mad until you did the very thing you decided you wouldn’t.</p>
<p>“Please...” </p>
<p>Needy and writhing, you didn’t care about your principles anymore. It didn’t matter that you were angry with him. You knew you couldn’t say you were sorry; he’d called you on that too many times before. And you couldn’t say you didn’t mean it because you did. Everything would be easier if he fucked you and then forgot about you. But you couldn’t go back to him pretending you didn’t exist until he did the deed, until he humiliated you enough to sate his ego.</p>
<p>“Guh! Please!” </p>
<p>He purred against your topmost vertebrae, satisfied that he’d rendered you a wrecked and willing thing.  Indignant, a version of what he wanted, one you could live with, jumped up to the tip of your tongue without your brain’s involvement. </p>
<p>“Just fuck me and get it over with.”</p>
<p>He stopped moving completely. The water lapsed into a dead calm. Always in a rush to prove him right, you lit the fuse and waited for obliteration. </p>
<p>You chewed the inside of your cheek, telling yourself it would be fine. Surely, you could endure his hate fucking. You could withstand a few minutes of exquisite torture for his cause. He wouldn’t kill you because it wouldn’t serve his purpose, but he’d taken all of your effort to be here with him and tossed it out. He went out of his way to prove you meant nothing at every turn; and in doing so, he doused the torch you carried for him. </p>
<p>Doubt and blackness wrapped you up like a shroud. He didn’t want to know you, and he didn’t want you to know him. It panged at your heart, but you accepted it. You’d cried for days when you thought he wasn’t coming back, and you clung to him with everything you had as he pinned you to the floor again and again when he returned. But he felt nothing for you.</p>
<p>You were a means to an end.</p>
<p>Fingertips you expected to flay apart your sides wrapped around your rib cage and lifted you. It was unsettling, the almost gentleness of his touch. He dislodged your hold on the wall and turned you to face him, letting your weight sag when he had you right where he wanted. You looked away when he trapped your chin in a chiding grip and turned your face forward. You wouldn’t - couldn’t - look at him. It would shatter your belief that you could be nothing more than his unfeeling pawn.</p>
<p>“One question,” he said.</p>
<p>He rubbed his thumb back and forth over your mouth and regarded you evenly when your surprised eyes peeked up. His free hand hooked under your knee and guided your leg around his broad hip, and it didn’t occur to you to argue. You stared, mesmerized by his kaleidoscope eyes and the sexy way fat drops of water amplified his lovely eyelashes.</p>
<p>Abandoning your gaping mouth, he turned the collar around on your throat until the thing he was after sat right above your pulse. You knew what it was without having to look. There was one peak in the jade that was sharper than the rest. You woke up every day to new punctures and scratches from sleeping on it. Your heart stopped beating. He would break it. Or, he would use it to pierce your jugular. You’d gone too far, and he meant to send you away. One too many failures. One too many challenges.</p>
<p>Nothing could have prepared you for what he did next.</p>
<p>He pushed the pad of his thumb against the molded thorn and lifted it to his mouth. He licked away the bright red smear, and you gawked, thunderstruck. Squeezing forth another drop, he swiftly pushed the digit into your mouth before you could object. You groaned and curled your fingers into his shoulders as the flavor exploded in your mouth. It was something you knew so well — a candy unlike any you’d ever known before coming here, but one he treated you to daily.</p>
<p>Your brain misfired, sending a contraction signal to every muscle. Brow knit tight, you bit down on his knuckle and moaned pitifully. This act, this offering, was an admission. He had been feeding you his blood, drop by lone drop, and he offered you this kernel of knowledge in his unique, primitive way. Pulling his digit free, he led your face to his for the sort of scorching kiss one gave a long-lost lover. It was firm lips and a velvet tongue, and it almost made you believe he cared.</p>
<p>“Pay attention.” He hummed it against the corner of your mouth and maneuvered you so both legs hugged his waist. Reaching around you, he lined himself up and speared your cunt with the rounded head of his cock. He pushed your hips down, sheathing himself inside of you agonizingly slow. “One question, lamb.”</p>
<p>You whined, head falling back, chest heaving. You never got used to his size. He was long and wide, and your pussy twinged each time he stretched you to the point of tearing. This time, his fingers dug in, and he left deep moons in the meat of your ass. He buried his face into your wet hair and growled as he bottomed out. He enjoyed plundering your body to its very limits, loving the way you had to work to accommodate his size. You tried to obey, to concentrate, wracking your brain for a suitable question. He bent to bathe your sternum with kisses, though, and worked you up and down on his cock in such a way you forgot to even blink.</p>
<p>Your mind raced from thought to thought. There was no way to tell if you’d ever get this chance again. The question had to be worth it. Somehow, you knew he would answer whatever you asked. It might have been the look in his eye or the way he didn’t break your teeth for daring to talk back, but you knew he would answer.</p>
<p>
  <em> Why am I not hungry? Does Sky Walker exist? Did you kill your brother? Why can’t I leave? What is the red saber you carry when you reap? Do you ever take a vacation? Why do you wear that mask? Who are the men who go with you? Are they dead? Are you dead? What happens to me after all of this? Where do the dead go? Is there really such a thing as Balance? Why do you call this place Hosnia? Is it different from Chandrila? </em>
</p>
<p>From that chaos, one thought rose above the rest, louder and more crucial than anything you’d ever wanted to know before. You had it - the question worth asking.</p>
<p>You looked up to find him studying you intently. That shimmer at his seams was more pronounced, and your eyes traced one otherworldly filament to nothingness. Your heart hammered, and you touched his fresh scar again, hoping against hope that this blurring wasn’t the last vestige of their war. If he was gone, who would fill the empty husk of you now that he’d hollowed you out for his own intent?</p>
<p>Your name drew you back, nearly lost to the water that sloshed with his every stroke. The current of it amplified his surging weight against you, pinning you for his dissection. You held your breath, eyes fluttering closed on a particularly good thrust, but he nudged your nose with his until you opened your eyes on him again.</p>
<p>The world you knew was about to change irrevocably. Mashing your lips together for a second’s more bravery, you committed to it. Whatever came next would, undoubtedly, alter your existence here in Hosnia, but you pressed on. </p>
<p>Better to ask forgiveness than permission.</p>
<p>“What’s your name?”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I truly hope you are enjoying this random work from my brain, and thanks for hanging in w/ me. :)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. I Am Owed</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>In this new, awkward quiet, there were two things you reminded yourself of constantly. Things you’d kept fighting. The utter shift in his demeanor, however, made them concrete.</p><p>The first was that The Ren was not human, and expecting him to behave as such was folly.  </p><p>The second was that The Ren was right. Begrudgingly, you admitted that you learned more when you stopped asking him questions in favor of quiet observation.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Please note: This chapter deals with dark themes, including self-harm and un-aliving; mentions of pregnancy and mass death.</p><p>This is the time for adulting; know your triggers and police yourselves.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em> Corruption, violence, and faithlessness consumed the Galaxy. Third Man knew only greed, depravity, and wickedness. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Angry and vengeful, Grandfather Sky Walker demanded the brothers begin anew. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Wipe clean the face of every planet,” he commanded. “Let not a single creature survive my wrath.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> And so, The Ren stretched his substantial power across the Galaxy, darkening all, down to the scantest light of life. </em>
</p><p>Kylo.</p><p>It fit him perfectly, both abrupt and beautiful. You thought about it daily — how he chose a name apart from the one he was given, how he chose something that someone could whisper, moan, or shout. It would fit every situation perfectly. You wondered how long it had been since he told someone his name, or if he’d ever done so at all.</p><p>But a wall came down after that day. A price you paid for your nosiness.</p><p>After telling you his name, he stopped kissing you, stopped grazing his fingers along your skin in the gentle way that made butterflies dance in your belly. He made you sleep in his bed, and he used you at least twice per day, but he hardly spoke, and he hardly worried for your enjoyment. It was a business transaction. Nothing more. </p><p>It’s how he had you each morning. What should have been an erotic moments were tainted by his lack of consideration. His only goal was your pregnancy, and he hunted it relentlessly. On hands and knees for him again, you gripped the silk, sable covers and buried your face into the crook of your arm while he pommeled you from behind. He trapped you in a delirium that was both maddeningly good and incredibly empty. </p><p>He forced your cunt open wide with his girth and rattled your bones with powerful thrusts, a snap of his hips that made you see stars. You didn’t want to moan; but when his eager cock nudged at the deepest part of you, the target he sought every time, you had to bite your lip to keep it down. Each time, his grip left bruises, marks you had to soak away in the bath; and each time, you whimpered and hiccuped into the bedsheets, not willing to give him the satisfaction of seeing the wreckage he made of you if he didn’t care.</p><p>Involuntarily, your pussy spasmed around him. You learned that the fiercer you squeezed shut your eyes, the more your cunt tightened for him to mirror it. Since then, you curled into a ball, as small as possible, and tucked your arms beneath you, turning your cheek against the bed. Your body betrayed you repeatedly, clenching and contracting around him. Your pussy was always ready to receive him, even through the brutal sting of it being broken open too quickly.</p><p>You suspected he delighted in making you cum when you didn’t want to, but he didn’t show it. The only sign you had that you pleased him was a grunt here or a groan there, but he always kept them contained behind clenched teeth and a locked jaw.</p><p>Blessedly, his pace tripped into erratic. He buried himself in you to the hilt and flooded you with his seed, not heeding for a second that you wept. Finished with you and your nonsense, he allowed you to fall into a disheveled mess as he dressed. He hardly looked at you anymore, committed to acting like you didn’t exist until he wanted your cunt. If you had even an inkling this would be the result, you’d have never asked his name. In giving you such an intimate detail, he liked you less; but whether it was because you’d outwitted him and made him tell you something profound or because you wasted your question on something so simple as a name, you couldn’t say.</p><p>In this new, awkward quiet, there were two things you reminded yourself of constantly. Things you’d kept fighting. The utter shift in his demeanor, however, made them concrete.</p><p>The first was that The Ren was not human, and expecting him to behave as such was folly. Since you’d arrived, you argued with yourself over the existence of his feelings. If he had them, you surmised, they must differ from anything you could comprehend. But undoubtedly, someone, something, so complicated and profound as he felt.</p><p>You laid that argument to rest once and for all. The chill that settled over your every interaction proved he felt nothing. At the very least, he felt nothing for you. </p><p>The second was that The Ren was right. Begrudgingly, you admitted that you learned more when you stopped asking him questions in favor of quiet observation. If he suspected your sudden pledge to silence, he refrained from commenting on it. You assumed that he preferred it. He only wanted one thing from you; and as long as you gave it, he didn’t care how you passed your days or the tumultuousness of your pitiable mortal emotions.</p><p>It was the not caring what you did, the modicum of freedom, that made space for your education.</p><p>Perhaps he was satisfied you were as tied to this place as he; or, perhaps he didn’t care at all what happened to you, but he no longer barred you from venturing outside, and you learned that the border to Hosnia was half a day’s walk from the mouth of his keep to where you’d entered. Further, you learned that unless The Ren’s underlings were with him, they patrolled that border, ever ready for a threat he could not expect.</p><p>You knew exactly who that was now, and why he would come.</p><p>Inside, you discovered that although The Ren had a throne room, he was only ever in it to leave. You found multiple nooks from which to spy; and for a fortnight, you watched him come and go. You learned that the doorway responded to him only, but it remained open long enough for him and his team to pass through, regardless if he took them or not. If he was alone, that portal remained open long enough for them to cross its threshold. </p><p>Long enough for anyone to do it.</p><p>The most important thing you learned was that it was 12 steps from your current hiding spot to that door. </p><p>There were only a handful of outcomes on the other side; and after weighing them all, you decided it was worth the gamble. He left you with no option but to steal your information; and if you died over there, you would be free of this bleak existence. You doubted he would allow you to return to your family in death, but you would be rid of him and the vacant way he looked at you. It was that apathy, that muted disgust that cracked you apart a little more day by day.</p><p>Waiting for him to return was excruciating. Once you decided on your plan, everything seemed to stretch on for an eternity. But finally, it was time, ready or not.  Here you were, blood rushing, ears ringing, holding your breath lest he hear you with his damnable godly talents.</p><p>The sudden echo of energy strikes, the crackle of air that signaled his return ignited your adrenaline. Squeezing your eyes shut, you concentrated on the sounds, admonishing your senses to work better, faster.  Then you heard his boots. One step, two steps. He would turn to his right as he always did, and you had seconds to make it through. You stood up onto bare toes, electing to forego your boots in favor of stealth. </p><p>This was it. The moment was yours. Ever the stupid girl, you pushed off the wall, sprinted the 12 steps, and vaulted across the static boundary, leaving the growl of your name behind.</p><p>What you careened headlong into was too stunning to name.</p><p>It was a paralyzed world, stopped in time, bleak, and awash in shades of destruction. Trees stood black as soot against a charred ground; buildings crashed and rumbled to rubble along the horizon; bodies lay all around, burned to nothing but bones. There was not a leaf, not a flower, not a carrion to recover the life that was once here. You blinked, frozen to the spot at the atrocity of it all. Dead bodies. Dead foliage. Dead planet.</p><p>To your roots, you knew this was a planet-wide phenomenon. It was a razing that hadn’t been seen in millennia, the kind most people believed to be fable.</p><p>Large fingers beneath your collar jerked you off the ground and backwards. You tumbled into the raging beast, pushing against the pillar of his chest and twisting to get free. You wanted to scream, to slap and claw his flat affect of a face, but he pinned your arm behind your back painfully.</p><p>You hunched over, falling into him, and your sobs had you pressed against his shoulder, seeking comfort that would never be there. You managed only a strangled, hoarse whisper.</p><p>“What did you do?”</p><p>He snarled, spun you, and mashed your back against his front, wrapping you in an iron hold. He made you look with fingers dug harshly into your cheeks. He was so angry you felt the tremble of his digits against your skin. If you didn’t open your eyes, if you disobeyed, you feared he would do worse.</p><p>“You asked how I spend my days.” His furious breath tickled your ear, loosing a shudder that registered through your terror. He seethed. You could hear it in his voice, straining in a semblance of calm but aching to explode. “Look.”</p><p>Abruptly, the landscape changed. No longer standing atop a hill, you looked out over a cliff, gawking at what clearly used to be a sea but was instead dried and barren. Another shift had you in the center of a scorched forest, then a hollowed out city. Your lungs, nose, and eyes burned from debris and dust hanging too thick to fall. The air changed again, and again, and again, but the scattered atmospheres had one commonality. You fought to inhale it, the remnants of destruction inundating your senses. </p><p>Foolishly, you thought the doorway was the key; but just as every time before, you were wrong, too simple-minded to work it all out. While it needed him to function, he did not need it. World after woebegone world flashed in front of you. All the same - devoid of vibrancy, emptied of the living. He left husks in his tracks, fractured shells to punctuate his passing.</p><p>“Stop.” You croaked, hanging limp in his concrete arms. “Please stop. Why are you doing this?”</p><p>As always, it was one question too many. Releasing his grip on your face, he shoved you away, sending you crashing to the ground. </p><p>“What could you possibly understand about the cosmos, you perpetual idiot?”</p><p>When you looked up at him, your eyes went round as moons. Your throat dried out, and your fingers dug into the sod beneath you. You shook away tears, thinking perhaps a less blurry lens would put him back to the way he was yesterday. But no. You looked upon a tragic figure, set ablaze by the sort of feeling you believed him to be incapable.</p><p>He was resplendent. Righteous malice morphed his already angular features into hard lines. His eyes shone a dangerous obsidian, and his lips quivered in a way that should not be so enticing. He could blink you out of existence, but you remained engulfed by the expanse of his disconsolate stare. He was endless and, you feared, unknowable. For a moment, he seemed to be larger, more real and more solid than ever before, but it was fleeting, obliterated by the war raging inside. He threw an arm out, gesturing for you to take it all in.</p><p>“My job.” He sneered, the word practically dripped with disdain. “My consuming, inescapable, infernal purpose.” </p><p>You nearly spoke, nearly proved for the hundredth time that you were an idiot. Somehow, you found the wherewithal to snap your mouth shut so hard it clacked. His fists clenched, and he looked away. You watched his jaw tick, heard the grinding of his teeth. Despite the clear and present danger, you had to say something. There was no other option. With the weight of precisely all of creation on the line, you must try to reason with madness.</p><p>Mustn't you?</p><p>“Surely, he didn't mean this.” </p><p>It was barely a whisper, the horrified challenge buried deep in your gullet. He was on you in a flash, hauling you up from the ground to hang like a limp doll. Absurdity in the face of absoluteness.</p><p>“You think you know what gods mean to do? Your Sky Walker and his peaceful middle way?” His voice tore at your soul, all jagged edges and steel. “Whom do you think he burdened so you could live freely? Whom did he abandon to an eternity of servitude?”</p><p>You clutched at his shoulders, legs flailing in the air to find something to stand upon. But when you caught his eye, you found not only anger, but a sorrowful determination. Time stopped; your entire torso seized, sending a burning radiating through your ribs. You saw it then. Saw the unstoppable slog through time, colored bitter by anger and loneliness. It all coalesced for you in this terrible, gut-twisting understanding.</p><p>He never had a choice.</p><p>You had choices. Free will. Limitless possibilities. Your eyes again lost focus, and you fought to keep your mouth from trembling. No doubt he would see your empathy, your compassion for his predicament as pity; and no doubt, he would punish you for it. Curling your fingers into his coat, you shook your head because you had no words to give him, nothing more than the ramblings of a child.</p><p>“I am owed an audience.” His tone evened out, smoothing into that tantalizing seduction you knew and craved so well. His fingers brushed against your sooty cheeks, almost tenderly. “That's the difference between us, lamb. You talk about genocide, about vengeance and purpose; but every day, you move further from that path.”</p><p>Again, you shook your head, but you couldn’t look away. Dismayed, you tried to block out what you knew he would say. What came next was a horrible truth, one you didn’t want to know. But you had only yourself to blame. Like a zealot, you pursued his secrets; and now, you could never give them back.</p><p>“I am genocide,” he said.</p><p>His eyes hardened a second before his lips found the quivering of your chin. He ignored your half-hearted imploring. There was no changing his course. He was resolute and beyond redemption.</p><p>“I will annihilate you all until he comes.”</p><p>“What happens when you find him?” You surprised yourself with the question. “To me?”</p><p><em> To us. </em>  Your battered spirit wanted to ask, to demand he reconsider you, but you swallowed it down, wondering when the rest of you decided you were his despite his hatred.</p><p>The plump of his lips flattened into a hard line as he set you on your feet. Your accursed curiosity led you to a second grim fact. Your stomach banged, and your jaws ached from how hard you fought to keep them in check. Tumbling along the line from what he had revealed, you worked out what he hadn’t.</p><p>He would challenge Sky Walker.  And one of them would die. </p><p>You struggled, mind racing. Your jittery eyes traced a curling wisp of his shoulder into nothingness. It was more pronounced today, the unsteady solidity, and you realized that the more he committed to leaving, to possibly dying, the more he bled away at the edges. In searching for a means to be free, he was already fading.</p><p>That’s what Solo meant. This was the damage. Without him, the cosmic balance no longer existed. He tipped the scales further and further every day he kept this quest. He would reach that goal; there was no way around it. This hatred, this murderous need to find Sky Walker, who never allowed him the same freedoms as man, dogged his every moment. One way or another, he would…</p><p>“I’m the back-up plan.” Understanding dawned, and your voice grew stronger. Unconsciously, one hand covered the lower swell of your belly while one covered your heart. “Aren’t I? If you can’t find him, you mean to make an heir, a replacement.”</p><p>Not someone to love. Not someone to ease the ache of solitude. Someone to take over. An escape.</p><p>“You’re going to leave.” Your eyes hardened to match his, irritation suffusing your face with heat. “Aren’t you? You’re going to leave us behind without a second thought.”</p><p>Whereas you were so angry you didn’t realize your slip of tongue, he caught it. His deadly eyes flashed. He tangled thick fingers in your hair and wrenched your head back, cataloging your responses in his predaceous way. </p><p>“When?” His voice dropped into husky, a gravelly, unnerving timbre that made you squirm in his hold.</p><p>You tried not to think about the long-gone days when he used that tone on you, when he wrapped his limbs around you and fucked you into blissful oblivion, when he kissed you until you couldn’t breathe. You tried to hold on to your anger, but the living prisms he had as eyes were distracting, so beautiful you lost track of your ire. He rubbed his thumb back and forth across your mouth in that soothing way that made you want to beg. Your resolve was weak compared to his.</p><p>“A-a few weeks, I think,” you mumbled, fidgeting. Maybe if you whispered, it wouldn’t be real. “I’m not sure.”</p><p>Rigid fingers wrapped around your neck, tempting it to swallow anxiously. He squeezed until you hitched up onto your toes, trying to keep a bit of leverage and not expire at the end of his arm.</p><p>“And yet, you purposefully threw yourself onto an unknown planet, endangering my child.”</p><p>It wasn’t a question. He wanted no argument, no excuse or fake reasoning. He didn’t want an apology. You could clearly see he wanted to discipline you for your insolence and idiocy. Your brow furrowed, an icy heat blossoming in your middle. It was more than sympathy. More than compassion or understanding. You felt this deep in the dark of your mind, in the recesses you’d only discovered existed since you crossed into Hosnia.</p><p>The tremble of your voice calmed. The twist and twitch of your arms and fingers settled. Your breathing found a steady tempo because this wasn’t a childish fancy. It wasn’t a juvenile overreaction or vapid gambit. You had a reason to come here, and it was a reason he had to understand. It was his language.</p><p>“Why is it alright for you to want to die but not me?”</p><p>Something new eased the fury in his features. The grip on your pulse loosened, and his lips parted. He looked down on you with what could only be surprise. It was a look you’d seen only a few times before.</p><p>“You’re seeking the one being in all of creation that can kill you; and if he does, I won’t even know. You’ll have left me behind.” </p><p>The depth of your honesty had you quaking, but it was not fear or anger. </p><p>“I’m already alone. You already hate me. I have no one to go back to and no reason to carry on bearing your loathing. Pregnant or not, I have every reason and right to want to walk off a cliff.”</p><p>You couldn’t cry, yell, shake, or stomp. Admitting you’d like to die should have produced something of an emotion, but you only met his assessing eyes with yours. They shone with tears you could not shed. You had no more feelings to give today.</p><p>“I’d like to go home, please,” you said flatly.</p><p>He was expecting you to say something else; it was as clear as his midnight sky in Hosnia. You looked away, unable to hold his gaze a second longer. He let go of your throat and slipped his fingers out of your hair. Grasping your upper arm, he pulled you into him, a cradle you longed for but found yourself hating. In seconds, the air changed from alien to recognizable. Benumbed and silent, you slithered out of his embrace, shoving off his arms to flee.</p><p>This time, you were the one to walk away, leaving him standing in the throne room as befit a hollow statue.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Tell Me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>“Please don’t pretend.” It was little more than a hoarse croak that cracked at the end. “I can’t bear it. Let me be.”</p>
<p> “What do you know of pretending?”</p>
<p>He pinched your chin and bade you look. It wasn’t a rhetorical question; he expected an explanation, but there was no simple answer.</p>
<p>“I know you don’t like me. You’ve made it clear.” You sniffed and looked down, hiding behind your lashes. “I just don’t know why.”</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This chapter has my heart. I hope you enjoy.</p>
<p>CN: Mentions of pregnancy, mass death, self-harm inclinations</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Even in Hosnia, with its perpetual twinkling twilight, there was night.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Gradually, a stillness swept over the land. The stars dimmed to a faint flicker. The wandering wind settled down to rest. And the expanse of The Ren’s keep went stone silent. Not a ripple in the bath. Not a creak from the ages-old walls. Not a crackle of candlelight. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was a crypt. Your crypt.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And yet, you could not die in it. You remained suspended in this agonizing in between. Perhaps if you lay quietly enough, you could slip beyond his enchantment, will your heart to beat slower and slower. Perhaps if you wallowed low enough in your grief, you could trick yourself into believing you weren’t apart from your family when the bombs dropped. You’d died with them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Perhaps if you concentrated on it enough, you could simply cease to be.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>These morose notions kept you curled into yourself. After leaving him in the throne room, you’d escaped to his bed, hoping for a few hours of reprieve. You kept on your cloak, hiding your head and face in the folds of the hood. You tucked your knees to your chest and hugged them tightly, imagining it was Nona. It was the only comfort you would get here, but it was hollow. Hollow, like everything else.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Numb, you ignored him when he entered. You didn’t need to see him anymore to know he was here. He changed the atmosphere by entering, altering the barometric pressure enough that you had to pop your ears whenever he came near. When the work was put down for the night and the souls collected, he came for you.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You thought briefly that maybe he would leave you alone. You’d fulfilled your part of the agreement. As far as you could tell, you were, in fact, pregnant. You’d done your part. But you let the wish die, as everything did here. He was too arrogant to stop turning your body against you. For all of your hostility and heartbreak, your body responded to him in a way you couldn’t quash. Regardless of how hard you tried.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You didn’t bother unwinding from your ball. He would move and position you how he saw fit. Your eyes, dry and red from staring into nothing for so long, closed in preparation. You found you could endure his emptiness if you did not look at him. It made the times he bent you over to have you less bitter. You’d been grateful for the ability to bury your head and not be tempted to look.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tonight, however, he did not pull you from your self-pity. Neither did he jerk you from your cocoon. He watched you; you could feel it, but you would not, could not, give him the satisfaction of looking over your shoulder. You were simply too wrung out to care. Whether it was pity or anger or outright meanness, he slid into the bed behind you without a word.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>An inkling nagged at the back of your mind, an anger you were too deadened to acknowledge. His presence comforted you, irrespective of your ire. Knowing where he was and that he was so close made you feel safe. He was the only indomitable soul in the whole of existence, and you had quite a good reason to be protected. More so now.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Despite yourself, you fell asleep.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You awoke to a tangle of limbs and the decadent scent of belladonna. You’d nearly forgotten how good he smelled close up. Having rolled out of your nook in your slumber, you'd stretched out and were cradled in his embrace with his fingers lazily stroking the back of your head in a way that made your scalp tingle.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Alarm bells rang in your mind. This was dangerous ground, and you needed to escape. He could fast make you forget your commitment to staying away. You shifted in his hold enough for him to ease it open slightly; but when he understood you meant to flee, those wrought irons trapped you again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Let me go,” you said timidly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He not only ignored you, he tipped your face up to press an almost chaste kiss to your wrinkled brow. It was too much, the very thing you feared. Your fight erupted, and you twisted to get free. You heard yourself telling him you’d done what he asked; he could leave you alone; you can’t do this.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He doused your outburst by rolling onto you, punctuating your feebleness. With one arm and one leg trapped beneath him, you gulped down fear and exasperation. He slid his leg up between yours, situating you so your cunt rubbed his broad thigh. Your cheeks burned, a complex mix of mortification and yearning. You’d finally found an empty place, a desolate oubliette in your heart where you could hide, and he was already dismantling it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Please.” You turned your face to one side, lips quivering. “Don’t do this.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You knew you begged more tonight than you did when you arrived, more than you did when he fucked you the first time, but it was unstoppable. You wouldn’t come back from this. If he broke you, if he cracked you open to make room for himself, you would never again be able to contain the sadness. You would ache and cry and pine without solace.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"This," he said flatly. It was an admonition and a challenge combined into a single syllable.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Please don’t pretend.” It was little more than a hoarse croak that cracked at the end. “I can’t bear it. Let me be.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His thumb swept across your pulse, feather soft and lingering. His jaw ticked the way it always did when you frustrated him, but you’d weather it. It was worth the risk if you could get free.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What do you know of pretending?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His patronizing question stoked the resentment lurking in the dark matter of your brain, but you fought it, blowing out as steady of a breath as you could manage. He pinched your chin and bade you look. It wasn’t a rhetorical question; he expected an explanation, but there was no simple answer. You knew you made far too many assumptions about his character, but he wouldn’t tell you anything to color your vision of him otherwise.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know you don’t like me. You’ve made it clear.” You sniffed and looked down, hiding behind your lashes. “I just don’t know why.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hm. Why.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He dipped his head to place another soft kiss to your neck, right above the hollow. He enjoyed finding the particular places that made you shiver. You pushed at his shoulder weakly, a last ditch effort, but he caught and drew your offending limb up over your head. His granite fingers latched around your wrist, keeping you bound to the bed, to him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This was bad. Both hands at his mercy. One leg stuck between his. His thigh perfectly situated to welcome your body’s yielding. You felt more bare, more vulnerable, more weak.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Carefully, he pulled the string holding the hood of your cloak in place. Until he untied that bow, you’d forgotten you wore it. Dutifully, he unpeeled you, layer by layer and in a fashion far too intimate. You’d jumped through that door with only your cloak because he kept you clad in as little as possible for easy access. And plunder as you might through room after room, there were simply no other clothes that would fit you available.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That idiot decision led you directly to this moment and this torturous undoing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You suspected the lack of attire was deliberate, but you forgot about all of that when he tugged the hood apart and pushed it further back. He caressed the length of your jaw with his knuckles, deliberately drawing out your suffering. This was calculated; he had millennia to learn manipulation, physical, mental, and otherwise.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You didn’t stand a chance.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You ask too many questions.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Egregiously slow, he popped the first button on your cloak, the one below the same hollow he’d kissed. With his index finger, he drew a small circle there. Your toes and fingers curled involuntarily. You wanted to argue that you only asked questions because he wouldn’t tell you anything, but you realized he answered your accusation. It was why he didn’t like you. A boulder dropped into your belly because you didn’t want to hear it. It was enough that he didn’t; you wouldn’t recover if he told you why.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You are stupidly reckless.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The second button met a similar fate, a leisurely unfastening. It wasn’t only the fabric he plucked apart. It was also you, and you squirmed beneath the utter slowness of it all. You wanted him to edge you forever and to hurry the fuck up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The last button sat over your heart, and you cursed it for being so bloody prophetic. You felt like howling. You wanted to hurt and sob, but the trail of his fingers made you forget your own name. With the third button gone, he traced the line of your sternum before dipping down to lick up a bead of sweat between your breasts.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You distract me,” he murmured, lips crawling back up towards your pulse.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That last one cracked lightning in your head. The room tipped sideways into spinning. Your lungs turned to steel, struggling to expand. You ground your jaws together painfully, and your throat burned with acrimony. With those three words, he shredded your tender soul to ribbons. Ruined, you squirmed, all pins and needles and lust. It felt like you wept, but your cheeks were too hot to be damp.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>I don’t. I don’t. I’m sorry. I don’t. I’m sorry. I can’t. Don’t.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It became your litany. You chanted it, lamenting and weary, but his hands did not waver from their task. He flipped the cloak open, bearing your flesh to the cool midnight air. His slightly calloused palm smoothed up from your calf, along the curve of your hip, and over the ripe swell of your breast. He squeezed, fingers digging in until your hiccups changed to whimpers. The noise he made right before he covered your straining nipple with his mouth coaxed your entire body into a jerk.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Kylo,” you choked, barely able to get it out. “Please. Don’t make me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was the first time you said his name, and his head shot up. His eyes bored holes into you, swirling incandescent. Fast as a feline, he shifted, settling more of his body on you and looking down. He went from halfway lying between to spreading your thighs obscenely wide with the sheer size of his frame.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You didn’t want him to see the things you couldn’t hide, but he clearly had no plans to let you loose.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Make you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His truncated parroting was infuriating, but you fought valiantly to not be goaded into an argument you'd never win.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His thumb breached your lips to swipe at your tongue, and your body surged up painfully as though he electrocuted you. You’d worked hard to forget the sugary taste of him, the way his skin drugged you to an erotic high at the briefest taste. He was deadly in every way and sexier than anyone had warned you, or maybe even knew.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was pointless to argue any further. He would win. He would always win. Hardening yourself against what you knew to be a hungry gaze, you looked up at him. For a flash of a second, he wavered at the sight of you, but he disguised it with the press of his lips into a steadfast line.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Don’t make me feel like I’m not alone.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You said it with much more calm and confidence than you actually felt. Your time in his captivity, beneath him and wrapped around him, developed this new ability to distill your rambling down to its foundation. He didn’t like questions or mortal nonsense. He wanted it plain, always, and you’d learned how to do it. He didn’t like a lot of extra words; but no matter your newfound skill, you overflowed with them. The essence of your human-ness was to make connections, to find understanding and empathy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I have nothing. Not a home, not a family, not you.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You studied the way he studied you, watching him swallow what looked startlingly like a feeling. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m not like you. I’ve had to mourn my family alone, and…” You stalled, but you knew he wouldn’t let you not finish. “I have to mourn you every time you say something nice to me or do something that looks like kindness but isn’t.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His brow cocked, a clear response to what he felt was your false presumption, but you didn’t care. You were beyond it all. You may as well say to him whatever you wanted because it couldn’t get worse than his stony countenance day after day, and the alternative to that was the peaceful forever of death. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m not asking you to like me.” Foolishly, you carried on, but your voice dropped, quieter and more afraid. The bravado you felt faded fast. “I’m asking you to not make me like you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The way he looked at you, slightly off stoic but decidedly demanding, boiled your blood. He reached down and hooked his fingers under your knee, drawing your leg up and around his hip. It parted your legs more for him, opening you up in a way that made you swoon. You thought you could stay out of reach of his dick; but with it so close, you practically salivated for it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It's far too late for that.” Following the first, he tugged your other leg into place around him. “Your body gives you away.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You wanted to disagree, but his teeth nipped your cheek. You shuddered at the tease of his hard length sliding through your mess, seeking its target in the warm and wet that never quite abated. Your everything swelled for him. Breasts, nipples, pussy lips puffy and engorged with your rushing blood. He wasn’t wrong, but you despised him for pointing it out.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Your breath ruptured into wild panting, sharp through clenched teeth. You stared up at him, hopelessly lost to the spiraling of color in his irises. He took advantage of your deliriousness and pushed your previously pinned arm above your head with the first and held both down with one massive hand. It elongated your body and arched your torso up into him, a thing he enjoyed if the thrum in his chest was to be believed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You imagined yourself an insect, wings stretched out and nailed to the bed; and all the while, the mad scientist above you inundated your senses. His mouth descended upon your breast once more, eliciting a strangled keening when your vocal chords caught up to the rest of you. He batted the hard nub with his tongue until you writhed pitifully, and he only switched to the other when you tried to buck him off from the over-stimulation.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Playing more and more into his hand, you hugged his sides with wobbly legs and tried to draw him in closer. Your body did truly lead the way, each movement beyond your mind’s purview. It no longer hearkened to your whims but to his. Your insides leaked out of your sex, painting both you and he with heat and want. It scented the air and mingled with his tempting poison. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You were seconds from begging him to fuck you when the blunt head of his cock found its place. He gripped your hip and mouthed at the side of your neck as he rocked himself further into your weeping slit bit by bit. Your eyes rolled back in your head, and your fingers dug into his because it always amazed you. He was long and thick and perfect; and though he stretched you open to the point of burning, it was intoxicatingly good. Thankfully, he bottomed out right when you thought you surely couldn’t take any more.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You whined his name, which spurred him to bite at your shoulder. You convinced yourself it was to cap off the grunt you heard in the back of his throat. He masked another noise by burying his face into your nape and sucking a mark into your salty skin.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You clamped your eyes shut because these were the sounds you so desperately wanted to hear for weeks. Anything to show you did well, to show that he enjoyed you, or at least your pussy, in a way he would never say. You’d forgotten, however, that shutting your eyes so hard contracted your cunt at the same time until he withdrew without warning and rammed back in to enjoy that tightness. You yelped in surprise but angled your hips to give him a deeper channel. The moans you tamped down for so long clamored to the surface. Ablaze, you couldn’t be quiet to save your soul. You mewled and yowled with each powerful snap of his hips and the way he pillaged you for every last centimetre your cunt had to offer. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This was unlike any time he’d had you before. He kept your limbs immobilized and your body taut. He kept his pace persistent but unhurried, which had you pleading pitifully. And he kept his mouth on you, lips grazing, tongue tasting, teeth scraping. Enticing, sinful noises were pushed into your skin as though he didn’t want you to hear them but couldn’t contain them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And then, it happened. The thing you wanted so passionately. The thing you dreamed about.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He snuffed out your cries with a fiery kiss, blasting through the last of your willpower. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His mouth was heaven, delicious and plump and divine. He knew exactly how he wanted to kiss you, and he led you to it expertly. He tipped your face precisely the right way and wrecked you with the spice in his spit. And when your lips trembled, agitated by sadness and relief and passion, he bit them, as though to chase those things away and replace them with himself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Abruptly, it all came to a halt. He pushed up to his knees, lifting the lower half of your body in the doing. He didn’t pull out, not willing to surrender his occupation of your body. Nor did he relinquish his rigid grasp of your wrists, opting instead to splay his free hand across the soft swell of your belly, pushing down to trap you there. Your head swam, and you groaned because you felt more full as he pressed on your abdomen. You knew he waited for you to look at him, but you blundered, destroyed and witless.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do you want to die?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His normally razor sharp tone lilted into something you could not name. Your eyes struggled to settle on one particular feature because he was hypnotically beautiful. His eyes shone brilliantly bright; a soft pink blush blossomed across his nose and cheeks from his arousal.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Punctuating the question, his hands found the magic he laid upon you at your forearm and thigh. He rubbed through the ever-looping blood, which, somehow, made your insides shiver. It was a wicked sensation, a stroke to your very veins that pulled a carp from the depths of your being.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Tell me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Your eyes stung. It was cruel of him to ask you this while buried to the hilt inside you, while he was in the middle of obliterating the walls you tried so hard to build between you. But it wasn’t a threat. As you peered up at him, charting a course from one irresistible mole to the next, you saw he asked in earnest. He offered you the escape you hopelessly sought.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Strange how you weren’t so sure you wanted it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Your loved ones still lay unavenged. Your call for the annihilation of The Resistance still had not been answered. You fought so hard to make it here, sacrificed so much of yourself to that end. What would it say about you if you abandoned it? Weak. Childish. Unworthy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Beyond that, you had to admit he was right. It was too late to pretend your feelings for him didn’t complicate the issue. You weren’t so stupid as to think he loved you, but you burned for his kind word. You craved his touches even when they weren’t kind. He lit a fire in you and made you feel, a feat you’d not accomplished on your own since the death of your people.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Not yet trusting yourself, you worried the inside of your lip and sought his eyes, but you weren’t prepared for the way he looked at you. He was primal desire manifested, ragged and raw need encased in the skin of a man. The first man. The only man.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But what if he died? What if he found Vader and walked off his own cliff? You’d be here, alone and lonely, with only whatever semblance of a child he produced to stop you from going mad.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>How you answered would change the arc of your life irrevocably. If you said yes, this teetering on the edge of begrudging coexistence ended. You could slip into nothing and be done with all of this. If you said no, he would have his hooks in your spirit for eternity. No matter if he never loved you, you wouldn’t be able to refuse him. Ever.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“N-no.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was a jittery, hesitant sound, but it was true. He accepted your supplication by pulling you close so he could lift you up. He guided your fingers to his shoulders and settled back on his haunches, holding you closer than ever before. Your weight sunk you down onto his cock and you whinged from the way it nudged your sensitive cervix. You crossed your ankles and tried to inch upwards for a bit of relief.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>One chiseled arm held you aloft, while the other traveled your length, winding from the nape of your neck to wrap around your generous hip. He found the spot between where your thigh ended and where your ass began and made a handle, using it to move you up and down, forward and back.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In mere moments, he had you wound up and ready to combust all over again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“S’ansur yien,” he crooned into your neck, a murmur more profound than thunder. “Tyor ilohira.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Kylo? I…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The way he growled into your neck and slammed his hips up into yours when you said his name settled your curiosity. There was no doubt he enjoyed hearing you say it, and you wondered if he’d ever heard it on another’s lips before. You clung to him as his pace quickened. Over and over he said those eloquent, alluring things into your neck, your hairline, your shoulder. Things you'd never heard before; things it seemed like he couldn't not say.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Tyor ilohira. Yien ilohira. S’ansur yien.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His presence expanded, saturating the room with a consuming euphoria that addled your mind. All while he worked you on his cock in much the same way he did that first day, using your body for his pleasure. Unlike before, he was as deep in your cunt as he could physically be without ripping you apart, and he strained at the seams to keep from doing so.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You quaked. There was nothing for it but to brace. Your pussy stung, and each subsequent shove of his dick tore at your cunt more. You bled for him, as you had so many times before, and you knew he could certainly smell it tinting the air with the slightest hint of iron. It roused him to a roughshod railing every time.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His mouth lined up with yours in a kiss that could only be called a brand. It was fierce and full of urgency, lusty and skirting frantic. His grip turned brutal, possessive; and then, it was your turn to swallow the indecent sounds he made as he flooded your battered cunt. He rode the orgasm out, pumping his hips slow and insistent until his satisfied hum abated.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You swayed, coiling your fingers in the hair at the base of his neck to not topple backwards. You were wary but content to stay here however long he might like. You traced the line of his scar down to his shoulder blade with a skimming fingertip. He was ethereal, holy, and you wanted to pray to him, to exalt all that he was and would ever be, though you didn’t know why. He hadn’t exactly earned that level of worship.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He didn’t meet your stare. Instead, his luscious lips rolled together as he pieced his indifferent veneer back together. A gasp lodged in the back of your throat because he had been affected. You saw it; here was your proof. He’d ridden that whirlwind with you, the result of which was plain as day on his face.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Kylo?” You dared a whisper, not wanting to break the moment, but your ludicrous need to know things simply would not allow the niggling question to go unasked. “What was that you said?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His lips lifted at the corners, an entertained huff that won you a nudge of his nose to yours. His eyes softened slightly. And you thought you might fly out of your body.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No more talk of cliffs,” he said, blatantly dodging your question.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>An almost affectionate kiss to your forehead closed the book on the topic, but you’d remember what he said forever, the secret he accidentally shared. You’d already begun plotting the rooms you’d ransack for the language texts you found while he was battling Solo.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The mesmerizing crest to which he carried you ebbed further and further away. A fatigue seeped into your muscles and bones. At his withdrawal, an altogether bleak vacancy infused you with doubt, right down to your marrow. You tried to curtail the childish grumble, but it escaped through the harsh way you chewed the inside of your cheek. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Had you been conquered or consecrated?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>What you wanted at the moment was sleep. Whereas he needed none, you still required it daily, a marker of your human fragility. The bath, and its healing ripples, could wait until tomorrow. He did not see fit to allow you this luxury, however. Instead, he scooped you and the blanket you tried to wrap about yourself up. He stepped into the hallway and turned in the opposite direction you expected. You peered over his shoulder forlornly, having decided that a bath would be preferable to whatever this would be.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He walked towards the doorway that started this insanity, dousing the embers inside that had you believing you might make it through today. You shrank more and more into yourself the nearer it drew. A blind terror took over, but you couldn’t move a single cell to save yourself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The choice he asked you to make meant less than nothing. His decisions were the only ones that mattered here; and having debased you, having obliterated all that you were, he intended to throw you out anyway.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You dared yourself to be furious, to find indignation and hate in the cavity where your heart should be, but there was none. There wasn’t fear either, only resigned acceptance. A heavy sigh sunk your shoulders down, and you closed bleary eyes. You might not fight your fate, but you wouldn’t welcome it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But the blast and crackle of the portal opening did not come.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>To your dismay, he set you on your feet in front of the free-standing obsidian wall in his throne room. The disturbing looking glass you tried so hard to avoid these days. The temptation to lose yourself to memories of Nona was too great. Scowling, you refused to face it. When he attempted to tip your face up, you stubbornly shook your head and crossed your arms over your chest.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was his laugh that drew you out of what you were quite aware was a fit.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You amused him, and it might have annoyed you had it not been for your outright astonishment. It wasn’t a smile so much as a smirk, and it wasn’t a full laugh so much as a chuckle, but it was a thing you had absolutely no idea how to process. You’d only seen him angry, lewd, or uncaring. You didn’t know how to process…. affable.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Disregarding the flabbergasted look on your face, he turned you about, but you were so afraid of what you would see that you stepped backwards, trying to dodge what came next. His trunk-like arm cinched about your middle, anchoring you in place as he leaned over your shoulder on the right. He shushed your uneasy chirping and placed his hand upon the cool rock.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Kylo,” the warble in your voice betrayed your apprehension, “I don’t…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The picture burst onto the surface, cutting off the woeful entreaty you planned. It took a full minute before you understood what you looked at — the destruction of a world. Your hands flew to a throat filled with fiberglass. Revolt roiled in your stomach and turned to chalk in your mouth.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No!” You yelled and thrashed. “I don’t want to see this!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The aggravated rumble in his chest didn’t dull your attempt to look anywhere but where he wanted. His fingers at your side dug in painfully, cementing you to this spot. It wasn’t that you feared for your safety. With him engulfing you like this, there was no safer place to be. The concern was that you didn’t want to see what annihilation truly meant. You wanted that to remain as nothing you could imagine, the scope of it too far beyond your insipid, idiotic mind.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He wouldn’t let you go until you obeyed, though, and you knew it. The tears that had been threatening to spill for hours broke loose, rushing over your horrified flush. The devil at your ear spoke, but it was lost to the dreadful cinema playing out before you. There was only the ringing in your ears as you watched blackness detonate and spread outwards across a lovely land that was so alive before.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If he hoped to stun you into a stupor, he succeeded.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Your thunderstruck neglect allowed him to slide the blanket from around you and toss it aside. The next time his mouth found your pulse, it was with the press of his bare body to yours. He plied the back of your neck with slow kisses until you exhaled. You didn’t remember stopping, but a burn in your ribs forced the issue.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“D’Qar,” he said quietly as the dead planet faded.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Another took its place, and your mouth went slack. You couldn’t help but place your hands there to gag yourself or to foolishly forestall what already happened. It assuaged your own guilt by little more than a fraction. The next planet met the same gruesome end.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yavin Hoth.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Your brow knit, and you tilted your head to hear him better. Taking advantage, he licked a stripe from his thorny collar to behind your ear.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Dantooine.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The picture shifted once more; the devastation coming quicker and with less and less mercy. Your eyes shot open, bulging out with understanding. He begat a war inside of you with this burdensome lesson because you knew those planets. You recognized them from the miserable, despondent plight that led you here.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Takodana. Ilum.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Resistance planets.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Your knees buckled, the weight too great to bear. It was only his sturdiness that kept you from hitting the floor. With his ghastly slideshow finished, his hands were suddenly everywhere. Around your throat, squeezing your ribs, hauling you onto your toes with fingers in your sticky pussy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Is this not what you asked me for?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His dramatic declaration did not match the reality of what he was and what he did. He took your request, your dying wish, and hideously warped it. You asked for The Resistance to be exterminated, but what he’d done was use your heartbreak as an excuse to further his own cause. He wiped out entire worlds with you as his unwitting muse.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Worst of all — You couldn’t tell him to stop.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>What did that mean for you?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You dropped into him, a sack of flour against marble. Torn between two truths, you choked on an appeal, unable to get it to leave your lips. The first was that you did this. You were responsible. There was no separating from the fact it was likely you who sparked the idea for his crusade. You’d unknowingly unleashed him upon the Galaxy when you asked him to avenge you.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The second was that you didn’t regret it. With all that happened, with the icy isolation, the bruises you bore for him, and the devastating fact that you’d snuffed out billions of lives, you regretted no part of it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Disgust clogged your mouth and fattened your tongue. Many of those people did not deserve to die. The overwhelming majority of them did not deserve that fate. But The Resistance did. In the darkest pit of your heart, you were glad. Glad those planets were gone. Glad The Resistance lost so much. Glad he’d done what was in his nature and wiped so many of them from existence.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You were so mired in the swampy feelings and cloudy thoughts you didn’t feel the slide of his lips over your shoulder. It wasn’t until he pushed you face first into the thing that you broke from your reverie. Just in time for his mouth to connect with the bottom of your spine. You shot up to your toes when he bit your ass and hauled your hips back towards him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Before you could protest, or think of why you ought to protest, he planted his face between your thighs and directly into the center of your cunt. You barked a curse, arching and squirming under the sinful slither of his tongue. At your front, his insistent thumb found your throbbing clit and pressed in, eliciting the most abject whine you’d ever produced.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It wasn’t the first time he’d tasted your blood, nor the first time he’d enjoyed toying with the rips he made in your fragile flesh. It was simply the first time he seemed to care if you enjoyed it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You’d been in his bed for weeks, maybe years given Hosnia’s disparate slog through space and time; and though the first few encounters were decidedly more patient and mild, he’d long since tired of waiting for you. Lately, he fucked you hard and fast, and he didn’t care for anything other than filling you as many times as necessary for his seed to take root.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But now…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Now, Kylo Ren, Death, the embodiment of all endings, was on his knees. For you. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He laved your cunt with his saliva and sucked your plasma-tinted slick down like candy. You vibrated each time his tongue delved into you and scratched at the infernally smooth surface to keep from tangling your fingers in his hair. His nose rubbed indecent parts of you that had never received such attention. His teeth tugged the engorged meat of your labia until it popped loose with a squelch. Your cunt pulsed around his probing, and he moaned in what sounded like delight.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Like a bitch in heat, you twitched in exquisite agony.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You pressed your forehead to the wall, barely upright, blinking heavily, and hardly seeing the floor. Overwhelmed was not an apt description for the moment, but it was the only one you could latch onto.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>What you could see, however, what you could make out between your legs and just past his punishing hand, was the bob of his cock, recovered and standing tall, proud, and ready. The thought of him rendering you further asunder dropped you off the edge, and you shuddered. You couldn’t muster a moan through the orgasm; it was too entrenched in your guts, too laden with emotion.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But he knew. He knew, and he claimed it all with sloppy kiss after sloppy kiss to your exhausted lower half. Cunt. Thighs. Hips. Ass. Vertebrae. You hissed when he slid two impatient fingers into your well worn core to scoop out the very last remnants of your downfall.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He did it. He won. Conquered, not consecrated.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The tangy aroma of you wafted close by when he collected you in a new embrace. He folded you into his dizzying gravity, covetous of his prize.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Kylo?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Your brow crinkled because a strange flutter disrupted your equilibrium. You struggled to identify it because it had been so long since you felt it. You pressed a hand to your hot forehead, to your belly, to your ear, trying to uncover the source. Was it fever? Exhaustion? Had you pushed the limits of his spellbinding too far? </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Untroubled, he hummed his response into the side of your head, no doubt expecting another of the endless questions you produced.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And then it was there. This bodily function you’d forgotten because you didn’t need it here. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m really… hungry.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Whatsoever The Ren offers me, I shall accept. He will carry me across dark waters, guide me to the distant shore, and bear me hence to my ancestors.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>And I will praise his name for all my time there.</span>
  </em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Please do not share my work to any other platforms without my express permission.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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